Mersey Leven Catholic Parish
Mob: 0417 279 437; mdelaney@netspace.net.au
Assistant Priest: Fr Alexander Obiorah
Mob: 0447 478 297; alexchuksobi@yahoo.co.uk
Mob: 0447 478 297; alexchuksobi@yahoo.co.uk
Postal Address: PO Box 362
Parish Office:
90 Stewart Street
(Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday 10am - 3pm)
(Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday 10am - 3pm)
Secretary: Annie Davies / Anne Fisher
Pastoral Council Chair: Mary Davies
Pastoral Council Chair: Mary Davies
Parish Mass Times: mlcpmasstimes.blogspot.com.au
Weekly Homily Podcast: podomatic.com/mikedelaney
Parish Magazine: mlcathparishnewsletter.blogspot.com.au
Weekday Masses 20th – 23rd October,
2015
Tuesday: 11am - Penguin (Funeral Mass)
Wednesday: 9:30am - Latrobe
Thursday: 12noon – Devonport
Friday: 9:30am
- Ulverstone
Next Weekend
24th & 25th October, 2015
Saturday Vigil: 6:00pm Penguin
Devonport
Sunday Mass: 8:30am Port Sorell 9:00am Ulverstone
10:30am Devonport
11:00am
Sheffield
5:00pm Latrobe
Eucharistic Adoration:
Devonport:
Every Friday 10am - 12noon, concluding with Stations of the Cross and
Angelus
Devonport: Benediction with Adoration - first Friday of
each month.
Prayer Groups:
Charismatic Renewal – Devonport Emmaus House Thursdays
commencing 7.30pm
Christian Meditation - Devonport, Emmaus House
Wednesdays 7pm.
DO YOU LONG FOR SOME SPACE AND STILLNESS IN YOUR LIFE AT
THIS TIME OF THE YEAR? 30 minutes of
silent prayer could change the rest of your week! There is opportunity
for this each Wednesday evening at 7pm at 88 Stewart Street, Devonport.
Why not come along and meditate with a small group of people and see what
happens? For
further information see www.wccm.org or talk with Sr Carmel.
Ministry Rosters 24th & 25th
October, 2015
Devonport:
Ministers of Communion:
Vigil: M Heazlewood, B & J Suckling, G
Lee-Archer, M Kelly, T Muir
10:30am: G Taylor, M Sherriff, T & S Ryan, M & B
Peters
Cleaners 23rd
October: G & R O’Rourke, M & R Youd
30rd October: M&L Tippett, A Berryman
Piety Shop 24th
October: T Baker 25th
October: D French
Flowers: M
Knight, B Naiker
Ulverstone:
Reader: M Mclaren Ministers of
Communion: B
Deacon, J Allen, G Douglas, K Reilly
Cleaners: G&M Seen, C Roberts Flowers: G Doyle Hospitality: M Byrne, G Doyle
Penguin:
Greeters: J & T Kiely Commentator: J Barker Readers: A Landers, R Fifita
Procession: Y & R Downes Ministers of Communion: T Clayton, E Nickols
Liturgy: Sulphur Creek C Setting Up: M Murray Care of Church: M Murray, E Nickols
Latrobe:
Reader: M Chan Ministers of Communion: I Campbell, Z Smith Procession: M Clarke Music: Hermie
Port Sorell:
Readers: VDuff, G Duff Ministers of Communion: E Holloway, B Lee Cleaners/Flowers/Prepare: K Hampton
Readings This Week: 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time
First Reading: Isaiah 53:10-11 Second Reading: Hebrews 4:14-16
Gospel: Mark 10:35-45
PREGO REFLECTION:
I settle down and prepare myself to spend some time with
the Lord.
How am I feeling today?
I take a deep breath and then breathe
normally.
I know the Lord is present at my side, always ready to listen, to
help, to comfort. After a few moments, I read the Gospel text.
What is my
immediate reaction: is it comfortingly familiar or remote and unconnected to my
life, or does it hit the very core of my difficulties?
Whatever is the case, I
persevere, read the text slowly several more times and let it speak to me.
Maybe I am drawn to the issue of leadership.
I reflect on the leaders around
me, in my family, my place of work, my community, my Parish.
Is their authority
over me based on love and service or on power and self seeking?
Do I know a
great leader, spiritual or political who follows Jesus’ advice?
What about me?
How do I treat others around me?
I stay with this for a while and speak to the
Lord about the issues which come to the surface.
To close my prayer, perhaps I
may want to bring to mind the words of the well known hymn:
The world wants the wealth to live
in state,
But you show us a new way to be great:
Like a servant you came
And if
we do the same,
we’ll be turning the world upside down..
Patrick Appleford.
Readings Next Week: 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time
First Reading: Jeremiah 31:7-9
Second Reading: Hebrews 5:1-6
Gospel: Mark 10:46-52
Little Archer, Barbara
Hancock, Kevin Bagley, Iolanthe Hannavy,
Geraldine Roden, Joy Carter, Jenny Morris, Christopher
Ockwell,
Josephine Murray, Reg Hinkley, Noreen Burton, Harry Cartwright &
…
Let us pray for those who have died recently:
Peter McGushan, Shirley Stafford, Vicki Glashower, Dr
John Walker, Leonard Hoare, Sr Marjorie Boutchard, John Mahoney, Stanley
Henderson, Aileen McHale, Terry McKenna and Anne Bailey.
Let us pray for those whose anniversary occurs about this time: 14th
– 20th October
James Graham, Valda Burford, Wayne Radford, Winifred Byrne,
Russell Doodt,
John Stanford Hall, Freola Jackson,
Vonda Bryan and Frances Roberts. Also Dorothy Newland, Jock Donachie. Amy Bates
and Marie Bates Knight.
May they rest in Peace
WEEKLY RAMBLINGS:
This
week Fr Alex and I (and 30 other clergy and pastoral associates) attended a
Pastoral Conference called by Archbishop Julian to look at his Pastoral Plan
for the Diocese, the practice of Sacramental Preparation (both for children and
couples preparing for Marriage), World Youth Day and a computer program for the
organisation of Parish Information. We started with Adoration before the
Blessed Sacrament at 9.30am and concluded with a Blessing at 3.30pm - it was
more than a day’s work.
During
the week I’ve been reading material from the Bishops Blog from the Synod
(https://www.catholic.org.au/synod2015) as well as an interview with Archbishop
Mark Coleridge by Joshua McElwee (http://ncronline.org/news/vatican/australian-archbishop-synod-must-change-church-s-language-actions)
- follow the links to the original documents.
Archbishop Coleridge suggests in his interview that what is happening at this
Synod is a process, a journey, and not something which will have a nice and
tidy solution on October 25th and is tied in closely with the Jubilee of Mercy
which begins on December 8th.
Our
Pastoral Conference and the material discussed, our Parish Pastoral Plan and
future directions, like the Synod, are not like an architect’s drawings with
the final product packaged and delivered – the whole process is ongoing and
being constantly reflected on so we need to be open to new possibilities about
being disciples – people who listen to the Word of God, whose lives are changed
by the love of God and who live that love in the community.
Please give generously or
Freecall: 1800 257 296 or catholicmission.org.au/water
PARISH
LITURGY PLANNING GROUP:
All those who assist
in, or are interested in assisting in, the preparation of our Advent and
special liturgies are invited to a meeting at Emmaus House on Sunday 25 October
at 2.30 pm. Some possible items for our agenda are:
- Co-ordinating overhead/power
points across the Parish
- Organisation of music for
Parish Celebrations – 22/11/15, 14/2/16 & 20/11/16
- Our music repertoire
- Advent
For further
information or to assist with transport, please contact Peter on 0419 302 435.
MacKillop Hill Spirituality Centre
Spirituality
in the Coffee Shoppe.
Monday 26th
October 10.30 – 12 noon
Come along … share your issues and enjoy a lively
discussion over morning tea!
MELBOURNE
CUP LUNCH
We
are up and running again! Come and join
in the fun!
**Cup Sweep, **Lucky Saddle, **Best Hat, **Raffle
Tuesday
3rd November 12.30pm start
Bookings by 29th
October please to help with catering arrangements
Phone Mary
6425 2781 or contact the Centre
on the number above
A special thankyou to Ulene Castles
and Helen Willis for the Spring Flowers.
Callers 22nd October Rod Clark & Alan Luxton
NEWS FROM ACROSS THE ARCHDIOCESE:
WORLD YOUTH DAY 2016 – REGISTRATIONS NOW
OPEN!! Registrations to join the Tasmanian Pilgrimage to World
Youth Day 2016 Krakow are now open!! Download your application pack at www.wydtas.org.au or contact Rachelle Smith: rachelle.smith@aohtas.org.au or 0400 045 368 (open to those aged
16 – 35 as at 31st December 2016)
FILIPINO MASS: Saturday 24th October at 3 pm St
Paul’s Church Paice Street, Bridgewater. All welcome!
COUPLES FOR CHRIST SEMINAR: St Paul’s Church Paice Street, Bridgewater 7th
November from 9am - 5pm Married couples invited to attend. Lunch and
snacks provided. For more information please phone Fr. Leo 6263 6242
Laudato
Si': On the Care of Our Common Home
Pope
Francis' Encyclical Laudato Si': On the Care
for Our Common Home is a call for global action as well as an appeal for
deep inner conversion.
He points to numerous ways world organisations, nations and communities must move forward and the way individuals -- believers and people of good will -- should see, think, feel and act.
Each week, we offer one of the Pope's suggestions, with the paragraph numbers to indicate its place in the Encyclical.
He points to numerous ways world organisations, nations and communities must move forward and the way individuals -- believers and people of good will -- should see, think, feel and act.
Each week, we offer one of the Pope's suggestions, with the paragraph numbers to indicate its place in the Encyclical.
“Stop blaming problems on population growth.
The real threat is excessive consumerism and waste. (Par 50)
St John Capistrano was born in 1386. His education was thorough. His
talents and success were great. When he was 26 he was made governor of Perugia.
Imprisoned after a battle against the Malatestas, he resolved to change his way
of life completely. At the age of 30 he entered the Franciscan novitiate and
was ordained a priest four years later.
His preaching attracted great throngs at a time of religious apathy and
confusion. He and 12 Franciscan brethren were received in the countries of
central Europe as angels of God. They were instrumental in reviving a dying
faith and devotion.
The Franciscan Order itself was in turmoil over the interpretation and
observance of the Rule of St Francis. Through St John’s tireless efforts and
his expertise in law, the heretical Fraticelli were suppressed and the
Spirituals were freed from interference in their stricter observance.
He helped bring about a reunion with the Greek and Armenian Churches,
unfortunately only a brief arrangement.
When the Turks captured Constantinople in 1453, St John was commissioned to preach a crusade for the
defence of Europe. Gaining little response in Bavaria and Austria, he decided
to concentrate his efforts in Hungary. He led the army to Belgrade. Under the
great General John Hunyadi, they gained an overwhelming victory, and the siege
of Belgrade was lifted.
Worn out by his superhuman efforts, St John was an easy prey to an infection
after the battle. He died October 23, 1456.
THE STIGMA OF SUICIDE
An article by Fr Ron Rolheiser OMI. The original article can be found here
Recently I read, in succession, three books on suicide, each written by a mother who lost one of her children to suicide. All three books are powerful, mature, not given to false sentiment, and worth reading: Lois Severson, Healing the Wound from my Daughter’s Suicide, Grief Translated into Words, lost her daughter, Patty, to suicide; Gloria Hutchinson, Damage Done, Suicide of an Only Son, lost her son, David, to suicide; and Marjorie Antus, My Daughter, Her Suicide, and God, A Memoir of Hope, lost her daughter, Mary, to suicide. Patty and David were in their mid-twenties, Mary was still a teen.
You cannot read these biographies and not have your heart ache for these three young people who died in this unfortunate manner. What these books describe in each case is a person who is very loveable, oversensitive, has a history of emotional struggles, and is in all likelihood suffering from a chemical imbalance. Hearing their stories should leave you more convinced than ever that no God worth worshipping could ever condemn any of these persons to exclusion from the family of life simply because of the manner of their deaths. Gabriel Marcel had an axiom which said: To love someone is to say of that person, you at least will not die. That’s solid Christian doctrine.
As Christians we believe that, as a community of believers, we make up the Body of Christ along with all of those who have died in faith before us. Part of that belief is that Christ has given us the power to bind and loose which, among other things, means that our love for someone can hold that person inside our family, inside the community of grace, and inside of heaven itself. In all three of these books, these mothers make it clear that this is exactly what they are doing. Their family, their circle of grace, their love, and their heaven includes their lost child. My heaven too includes these three young people, as should any true understanding of God, of grace, of love, and of the family of life.
That’s a deep consolation, but it doesn’t take away the pain. For a parent, the loss of a child to any kind of death leaves a wound that, this side of eternity, will find no healing. The death of one’s child goes against nature, parents aren’t supposed to bury their children. The death of any child is hard, but if that death comes by suicide, that pain is compounded. There’s the frustration and anger that, unlike a death from a physical disease, this is unwarranted, unnecessary, and an act of betrayal in some way. And there’s the endless second-guessing: How responsible am I for this? How should have I been more alert? Where was I negligent? Why wasn’t I around at the crucial moment? Guilt and anger comingle with the grief.
But that isn’t all. Beyond all of this, which is itself more than sufficient to break a person, lies the stigma attached to suicide. In the end, despite a better understanding of suicide and a more enlightened attitude towards it, there is still a social, moral, and religious stigma attached to it, equally true in both secular and religious circles. In the not too-distant past, churches used to refuse to bury someone who died by suicide on blessed ground. The churches have changed their attitudes and their practice on this, but, truth be told, many people still struggle in their gut to accord a blessed, peaceful farewell to someone who has died by suicide. The stigma still remains. Someone who dies in this manner is still seen as somehow accursed, as dying outside the family of life and the circle of grace. There is, for most people, nothing consoling in their deaths.
I have suggested elsewhere in my writings that the majority of suicides should be understood as death by a mortal illness: a deadly chemical imbalance, an emotional stroke, an emotional cancer, or an oversensitivity that strips someone of the resiliency needed to live. Here, however, I want address more specifically the issue of the stigma attached to suicide.
There’s still a stigma attached to suicide, that’s clear. With that in mind, it can be helpful to reflect upon the manner in which Jesus died. His death was clearly not a suicide, but it was similarly stigmatized. Crucifixion carried a stigma from every point of view: religious, moral, and social. A person dying in this way was understood to be dying outside the mercy of God and outside the blessing and acceptance of the community. The families of those crucified carried a certain shame and those who died by crucifixion were also buried apart, in grounds that then took on their own stigma. And it was understood that they were outside the mercy of God and of the community.
Jesus death was clearly not a suicide, but it evoked a similar perception. The same stigma as we attach to suicide was also attached to the manner in which he died.
The Politics of
Papal Visits
Posted on: 7th October 2015 by Nathan
Stone SJ
The original article can be found here
When Pope John Paul
II visited Chile in 1987 he was welcomed as a ‘messenger of life, pilgrim of
peace’ – Nathan Stone SJ remembers it well. How did Pope Francis live up to
these same accolades on his visit to Cuba and the United States?
I was there in April
1987 when Pope John Paul II visited Chile. It was quite the affair. Chile was
small, far away and off the beaten track. Whenever an international figure of
any stature came to town, it was a big deal, but John Paul was the Vicar of
Christ. The whole country came to a standstill. City buses actually halted
their service. The characteristic Santiago smog miraculously disappeared, and
people walked everywhere for a few days. It was our papal pilgrimage. Whan
that Aprill with his shoures soote… We have rather medieval tastes,
when it comes to religion. April is early autumn in the southern cone, bright
sunny days with hope of rain on the way. We love a long walk, especially if
there are tales to tell.
The local Church had
some input into the Holy Father’s speeches so that they would ring true in
context. John Paul’s Spanish was relatively good and he had that charismatic
baritone, trained in the theatre. There were memorable lines: ‘Love is
stronger.’ That comes from Saint Paul’s Letter to the Romans, of course, where
it says that love is stronger than death, understood in context as
a censure of the culture of death promoted by the Pinochet regime.
John Paul also said,
‘the poor can’t wait’. Immediate attention to the needy was a
priority in the Church’s social teaching. The poor had no resources with which
to weather a bad spell. The implication was that the wealth-first, trickle-down
economic programme, the original motivation of the military coup, had left
something to be desired.
The local Church also
wrote a papal hymn. Everyone learned it by heart and sang it to the pope
everywhere he went. He loved it. He remembered it for decades and he would sing
a few bars for Chilean visitors forever after. ¡Mensajero de la vida,
peregrino de la paz![1]
There were a couple
of tense moments. Water cannons doused protesters at the outdoor Mass inParque
O’Higgins.[2] And,
at the National Stadium, the Holy Father exhorted the nation’s youth to
renounce the idols of money, power and greed, to which a crowd of 90,000
assented with a rousing cheer. The last item on that list, after the impressive
dramatic build-up, was, ‘Do you renounce the idols of sex?’, to
which the crowd’s response was a disconcerting, unanimous silence; then a
playful, ‘No!’ The faux pas was blamed on the clandestine
communist youth league who had faked 20,000 tickets for the event, but there
aren’t that many groups of Latin American youth who will categorically renounce
sex on the spur of the moment like that, even if they are good, practising
Catholics. It was a cultural mishap.
There was some
concern among local Catholics (still a majority, back then) that the papal
visit would be utilised by the regime as tacit Vatican approval of more than a
decade of torture, disappearance and arbitrary execution, the dictatorial
repertoire for saving the homeland from an already waning threat of communist
world takeover. Protocol required that a meeting between heads of state be
arranged at the Presidential Palace. The pope was advised not to step
out on a certain balcony with the Presidential Usurper because it would create
an embarrassing photo opportunity. It was the place where democratically
elected presidents had traditionally received visiting nobility in order to
present them to the cheering masses.
Pinochet had never
had a meeting with such a high profile figure. Even his attempt to visit
Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines had been thwarted. He was an international
pariah, and the Holy Father stepped out on the balcony with him. That photo is
still around, long after the catchy papal hymn has been forgotten.
That legacy is
perhaps one of the reasons why some Americans have been shocked and dismayed to
discover, on the occasion of the recent papal visit to the United States, that
this pope was not a paid-up member of the Republican Party. Pope Francis has
insisted that he is not a leftist, that he speaks for the Church in upholding
official teaching and, whenever possible, advocating Christian compassion in
public policy. This is what makes climate change, immigration reform and the
scandal of homelessness high priorities on the papal agenda.
But, in spite of Pope
Francis’ 70 per cent approval rating before the visit, his priorities are not
necessarily high on the agenda of many of the American faithful. A large number
of the people to whom the Church now finds herself catering are a wealthy,
powerful and, strangely, puritanical brand of Catholic. Finding common ground
with evangelicals, for instance, used to be a problem. The papacy itself was
contentious. In the weeks before the Kennedy assassination in 1963, the Pastor
of the First Baptist Church in Dallas made a point of reminding his
congregation every Sunday that a man who obeyed the pope was unfit to be
President of the United States. Now, after decades of globalised conservative
ideology, the issue seems to have vaporised. Evangelical Protestants and
third generation Catholics are voting as a bloc in the USA.[3]
Some American
Catholics were scandalised that Pope Francis publicly shook hands with
President Obama – not because the American President is responsible for the
Guantanamo prison, for secret renditions and drone strikes, but because of his
effort to provide universal public health services, known as ‘ObamaCare’. The
grand moral polemic that has been fabricated, tabloid-style, over health
services offering birth control[4],
is just a distractor from more fundamental debates about the common good, and
how that should be funded.
Then, Pope Francis
went off to speak before both houses of Congress. It was a monumental
opportunity to make a call for justice, peace and reform. In heavily accented
English, he called for a more charitable America. It was edgy, and powerful.
Pope Francis comes
from a contemplative school of Catholic Christianity in which one makes every
effort to adopt the Lord’s criteria as his or her own. The Gospel was intended
to be contemplated and internalised so that all disciples
could come to identify with Christ and respond as he would do in every
situation, thus advancing the cause of the Kingdom of God on earth. Pope
Francis has taken this seriously.
His predecessors were
perhaps more vocal about the finer points of metaphysics and intrinsic moral
value. Those play out in the internal forum. But the Gospel says, ‘Blessed are
the peacemakers’. That means getting off the plane in Havana and risking
angering more than a million Cuban-Americans. It also changes the electoral
panorama in Florida, a swing state in American Presidential elections.[5]
During most of his
visit, the Holy Father spoke in Spanish because his English is not very good.
It was perceived as a gesture of solidarity with Hispanics, who are America’s
fastest growing minority but by no means a homogenous group. Chicanos are
Mexican-Americans: US citizens with good educations, English skills and
passports. They don’t like being confused with undocumented immigrants. Puerto
Ricans live in New York. They have a special legal status because Puerto Rico
is a US possession. Cuban Americans tend to be the wealthy who fled Fidel’s
revolution in 1959. They have legal status and they vote consistently
Republican, because Republicans talk tough on communism.
Then there are
undocumented immigrants who don’t vote. They hang together and create local
subcultures: culinary, linguistic and religious. There was once a sense of
shame for how the Irish and the central Europeans were processed on Ellis
Island in the shadow of Lady Liberty, but their modern-day equivalents process
themselves, on foot, through the deserts of west Texas and Arizona and a large
section of American society wants them all to go home and wait in line for their
visas. Only about 60,000 visas for unskilled labour are available each year.
That means the wait in line can last about three lifetimes
And now, we have a
Latin American Pope. Argentines speak with a flair that American Hispanics find
colourful. The Argentine Church has always been theologically and pastorally
conservative. We are discovering that that can also mean radically Catholic in
a good way.
The key to
understanding Pope Francis is not trying to figure out whose side he’s on. His
is the inspiration behind the Second Vatican Council. Over the centuries, we
had trapped ourselves in a labyrinth of rigid structures and fears. In 1963,
departure from the Church’s tradition wasn’t on the agenda. The objective was a
return to our origins, to rediscover the charisma of the early Church which
birthed a Eucharistic faith in the constant presence of the Risen Christ, our
guiding light.
A good shepherd
doesn’t follow his sheep. He leads them. Jesus always had a lot to say. The
crowds loved him, but the authorities sent him to Calvary for rabble rousing.
That’s how it is, sometimes. God bless Pope Francis. May he shake us out of our
spiritual lethargy, and get us back on track as disciples and missionaries of
good news for the homeless, the prisoners, the immigrants and the refugees.
Nathan Stone is Jesuit priest, American by birth and Chilean by
adoption. He studied theology at the Pontifical Catholic University in
Santiago, and Literature at the University of Texas in Austin.
[1] ‘Messenger of
life, pilgrim of peace’
[2] The father of
the nation was Bernardo O’Higgins, and yes, he was Irish.
[3] The master
strategist was perhaps, George W. Bush’s advisor, Karl Rove.
[4] A bigger issue
will certainly be abortion on demand. Catholics consider this is not health
care because pregnancy is not an illness. Republicans have made this a huge
campaign issue for the last thirty years, and not one has introduced
legislation that would revoke legal abortion, or facilitate avoiding it. (There
is still no provision for paid maternity leave in the USA.)
[5] We remember
that a court battle over the recount in Florida put Bush Jr in the White House
in 2000.
A SIMPLE ESSENTIAL OF GROWING HEALTHY PARISHES
One of the most effective things you can possibly do to grow a healthy parish that is easy to get started, not particularly demanding when it comes to maintenance, and, best of all, free:
Greeters.
Really? Yeah, really.
There are lots of reasons people give us for how they found their way to our church, but far and away the number one reason newcomers tell us they come back to our church is the hospitality. Admittedly that gets played out in a number of ways in our weekend experience, but the most impactful way is often that simple smile and friendly greeting at the door. It makes all the difference in the world when it comes to the unchurched persons feelings as they step into your church.
Here are three “best practices” when it comes to creating and maintaining a dynamic greeter ministry.
- Choose and train your greeters.
Like any ministry, greeters have to have a heart for what they do, a certain personality type that is required. This seems obvious but is often overlooked in our urgency to fill vacant roles. Decide what type of person is going to represent you best and form that first time impression. Then, train them. Most church greeters have had no training, and it is often painfully obvious. The simple process of training makes a dramatic difference in this ministry. Beyond your own in-house training, encourage greeters to visit other churches and study the best or bad practices of others.
- Create alternating teams of greeters.
Like many areas of ministry, teams work best for greeting ministry. It makes the effort more fun, creates a culture of collaboration and lessens the burden on individuals. The rotation helps ministers keep a fresh perspective and avoid burnout. Of course, a greeter in the “off” cycle can fill in for another greeter when needed which is very helpful.
- Treat it as a major ministry of the church.
In some churches, the greeters’ ministry has second-class status. There are probably a number of reasons why, but the point is, those churches that are highly effective in retaining first-time guests understand the importance of this ministry. Put some of your best people on it and be sure parish leadership is supporting and encouraging them. Gather the greeters together for ministry wide meetings and seasonal celebrations.
Myth, Art, and Poetry
This is a collated version of the daily emails posted by Fr Richard Rohr. You can subscribe to these daily emails here
Mythos and Logos
Another building block in my wisdom lineage is the world of
myth, art, and poetry. This realm has a great capacity to bring coherence,
meaning, healing, connection, and deep trust for the human journey that is
demanded of us. I recall Jane Hirshfield's words: "A good poem makes
nothing happen. It solves no outer problem. It is inherently
contemplative." And that's why myth, poetry, and art heal. Rather than
orient you toward solving a problem, they turn your focus toward naked being
itself, that deeper level of meaning, purpose, and inner vitality--that deep
well from which we draw all our enduring energies. They evoke those levels
hidden beneath the "steel manhole cover" of the ego, and speak to our
personal unconscious--as good therapy does--and even the collective
unconscious--as mystical and unitive knowing does.
Earlier this year I shared that there are several levels of
knowing and interpreting reality--a "hierarchy of truths" as Pope
Francis calls it. Not all truths are created equal, or of equal importance.
Something might be true, for example, merely on a psychological level or a
historical level or a mythological level, but not on a universal level. For
some sad and illogical reason, fundamentalists think the historical level is
the "truest" one. "Did it really happen just that way?" The
literal level is one of the least fruitful levels of meaning. Even if it did
happen just that way, our capacity to understand even that truth is still
filtered through our own cultural and personal biases, which are largely
unconscious. Truth on that level may be fascinating, but it seldom
"changes your life." [1]
At CAC's CONSPIRE conference last year, Rob Bell explained
the difference between logos, which is more like problem-solving language, and
mythos, which is more like the language used in good poetry. Logos language
includes facts, data, evidence, and precise descriptions. Bell says,
"Logos language and thinking got us medicine, got us airplanes. . . . We
are living in a culture in which we have had for the past three hundred years
an explosion of logos language. . . . But the problem is, there are whole
dimensions of our existence that require a different way of thinking."
Bell says, "The Bible is mostly written in mythos
language. . . . Good religion traffics in mythos. . . . Mythos language is for
that which is more than literally true. . . . Evolutionary science [logos
language] does an excellent job of explaining why I don't have a tail. It just
doesn't do so well explaining why I find that interesting!" We need mythos
language to express the more-than-factual meaning of experiences like falling
in love, loss, and death. [2]
Good religion, art, poetry, and myth point us to the deeper
levels of truth that logos can't fully explain. Early Christians knew this; but
the Western Church spent the last five centuries trying to prove that the myths
and stories in the Bible really happened historically, just as they are
described. The Church went backward here, as we came to rely heavily on
technique, formula, and certitude instead of the alluring power of trust and
allowing. The whole point of Scripture is the transformation of the soul. But
when we stopped understanding myth, we stopped understanding how to read--and
profit from--sacred story. [3] Art, myth, and poetry invite us into the
transformative world of sacred story. This kind of knowing has the power to
change us at the level of the subconscious and intuition because it can open
mind, heart, and body simultaneously. Children can read stories over and over
again, fully fascinated, without needing to verify the historical question.
Thus they can live in eternal and always true time, given away by that lovely
and captivating opening phrase "Once upon a time."
References:
[1] Adapted
from Richard Rohr, Hierarchy of Truths: Jesus' Use of Scripture (Center for
Action and Contemplation: 2013), MP3 download.
[2] Rob
Bell, In the Beginning (Center for Action and Contemplation: 2014), disc 3, CD,
MP3 download.
[3] Adapted
from Richard Rohr, an unpublished talk (Center for Action and Contemplation:
2015).
Your Imaginarium
Wisdom, just like good poetry, must and will always
"resist intelligence," as New England poet Wallace Stevens says
enigmatically. It gives just enough of reality to keep us out of our too-easy
egotistic center. True wisdom requires a spiritual state to complete the
"logic." Mature spirituality insists that we hold out for meaning
instead of settling for mere answers. Wisdom is necessarily and always
partially hidden, and reveals herself only to those who really want her and
will not try to make a commodity of her (Old Testament book of Wisdom 6:12-22;
7:22--8:8). It is precisely the same with God, I think. [1]
You cannot even imagine something or do something until you
first have an image of it in your being. This is surely why Einstein said,
"Imagination is more important than intelligence." [2] We each have
constructed our own imaginarium of inner symbols, meanings, archetypes, and
memories that have formed us. This is almost entirely unconscious but visibly
operative in all of our choices and preferences; the imaginarium is
foundationally real for us and has very concrete effects.
All the logic and reason in the world will not change us
unless we allow that logic to change our inner symbolic universe. You can
observe the deep power of the imaginarium when you try to change a person's
deep sexual fascinations or their need for security or certitude. Christians
were probably right when we said that "Only God can do this" by rearranging
our inner symbolic world. Such transformation might be called radical
conversion, and it is somewhat uncommon in my experience.
Let me give a strong example. For many Christians (mostly
Catholic and Orthodox), the very word "Mary" evokes an entire
imaginarium in the soul, and from there does its very real good work. If you
have no Mary imaginarium, "Mary" probably cannot "save"
you. All of the Marys in the Gospels--we are not even sure how many there
are--exercise a transformative, "bridal mysticism" on the prepared
human psyche. They feminize, sweeten, and give eros and pathos to the spiritual
journey. They work on you in a hundred unconscious ways--according to how,
when, why, and with what readiness we read the text or look at the image. A
heart open to the power of metaphor ("that which carries you
across"), a heart open to the feminine and open to intimacy, will leap
every time. A heart trapped in historical literalism, or closed to the power of
poetry, will remain bored, reactive, and trapped in critique. [3]
A true symbol is not only a pointer to "a more absolute
reality," but by that very fact awakens us to the deepest level of our own
life too. Good symbolism and imagery moves us into contact with our True Self,
with others, and with Everything--"God." After radical conversion,
after you have once fallen through the ego and into the collective unconscious,
the whole world starts becoming symbolic.
Both C. G. Jung and Joseph Campbell, spent much of their
lives trying to unpack these archetypal symbols for Western linear people.
Campbell even quotes Thomas Merton in this regard:
"One cannot apprehend a symbol unless one is able to
awaken, in one's own being, the spiritual resonances which respond to the
symbol not only as sign but as 'sacrament' and 'presence.' The symbol is an
object pointing to a subject. We are summoned to a deeper spiritual awareness,
far beyond the level of subject and object." [4] [We call that unitive, or
non-dual consciousness.]
. . . Mythologies and religions, are great poems and, when
recognized as such, point infallibly through things and events to the ubiquity
of a "presence" or "eternity" that is whole and entire in
each. In this function all mythologies, all great poetries, and all mystic
traditions are in accord; and where any such inspiriting vision remains
effective in a civilization, everything and every creature within its range is
alive.
And, I would add, this vision is trustworthy and has a
message for the soul. When mythologies and religions are no longer effective,
all transformation ceases and you have a quickly declining culture, with a high
degree of mental illness and neuroses. One must ask if this is not our present
situation.
References:
[1] Adapted
from Richard Rohr, Eager to Love: The Alternative Way of Francis of Assisi
(Franciscan Media: 2014), 247.
[2] Ibid.,
253.
[3] Ibid.,
256-257.
[4] Joseph
Campbell, Myths to Live By (Penguin Compass: 1993), 257.
Myths
Western rationalism no longer understands myths and their
importance. Although almost all historic cultures valued myths, we are the
obvious exception. Western culture has replaced these effective and healing
story lines with ineffective, cruel, and disorienting narratives like
communism, fascism, terrorism, capitalism, and consumerism. Each in its own way
is a watertight explanation and refuses any outside critique.
Each human has a de facto worldview that determines what is
important and what is not important to us, and we largely operate
unconsciously--until we are awakened from our sleep. Worldviews usually have a
symbolic story to hold them together, such as that of "Honest Abe"
chopping wood in Kentucky and educating himself in Illinois. Clever "myths"
like this become a standing and effective metaphor for the American worldview
of self-determination, hard work, and achievement. Whether they are exact
historical truth is not even important. We want and need them to be true. And
that is okay.
Such myths proceed from the deep and collective unconscious
of humanity. Our myths are stories or images that are not always true in
particular but entirely true in general. They are usually not historical fact,
but invariably they are spiritual genius. They hold life and death, the
explainable and the unexplainable together as one. They hold together the
paradoxes that the rational mind cannot process by itself. Myths, as do good
poems and art, make unclear and confused emotions brilliantly clear and even
life changing.
Myths are true basically because they work! A sacred myth
keeps a people healthy, happy, and whole--even inside their pain. They give
deep meaning and pull us into "deep time," which encompasses all
time, past and future, geological and chronological, and not just our little
time or culture. Such stories are the very food of the soul. When we start
fairy tales with lines like "Long ago, in a faraway land" we are
reaching for deep time truth. We Catholics used to say at the end of our Latin prayers,
Per omnia saecula saeculorum, loosely translated as "through all the ages
of ages." Somehow deep time orients the psyche, gives ultimate
perspective, realigns us, grounds us, and thus heals us.
We belong to a Mystery far grander than our little selves
and our little time. Great storytellers and spiritual teachers always know
this. The postmodern world has rejected most myths except two, and these are
especially lethal for the soul and for the poor and for the future: "I
produce therefore I am" and "I consume therefore I am." This
will never work for the soul, but we--believers and clergy included--have drunk
this fairly new version of Kool-Aid.
Remember, the opposite of rational is not necessarily
irrational, but it can also be transrational or bigger than the rational mind
can process. Things like love, death, suffering, God, and infinity are
transrational experiences. Both myth and mature religion understand this. The
transrational has the capacity to keep us inside an open system and a larger
horizon so that the soul, the heart, and the mind do not close down inside of
small and suffering times.
The merely rational mind is dualistic and divides the field
of the moment between what it can presently understand and what it deems
"wrong" or untrue. Because the rational mind cannot process love or
suffering, for example, it tends to avoid them, deny them, or blame somebody
for them, when in fact they are the greatest spiritual teachers of all, if we
but allow them. Our loss of mythic consciousness has not served the last few
centuries well and has overseen the growth of rigid fundamentalism in all the
world religions. Now we get trapped in destructive and "invisible"
myths because we do not have the eyes to see how the great healing myths like
the Exodus, Cross and Resurrection, Krishna and Arjuna in the chariot, and
Buddha under the Bodhi Tree function and transform. [1]
In closing, let me offer this wish from Jungian analyst
Clarissa Pinkola Estés: "I hope you will go out and let stories, that is
life, happen to you, and that you will work with these stories from your life .
. . water them with your blood and tears and your laughter till they bloom,
till you yourself burst into bloom." [2]
References:
[1] Adapted
from Richard Rohr, Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life
(Jossey-Bass: 2011), xxix-xxxi.
[2] Clarissa
Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild
Woman Archetype (Ballantine Books: 1996), 511.
Art and Music
Joseph Campbell writes: "Myths are clues to the
spiritual potentialities of the human life. . . . Mythology teaches you what's
behind literature and the arts, it teaches you about your own life. . . . I
think of mythology as the homeland of the muses, the inspirers of art, the
inspirers of poetry. To see life as a poem and yourself participating in a poem
is what the myth does for you." [1] Often, various forms of wordless art
and music precede the mythic story. We often know things imaginally,
aesthetically, or harmoniously before we know them rationally or conceptually.
As long as humans have existed, it seems that we've turned
to art to express the inexpressible. Mircea Eliade (1907-1986), Romanian
historian of religion, writes that "sacred art seeks to represent the
invisible by means of the visible. . . . Even in archaic and 'folk' cultures,
lacking any philosophical system and vocabulary, the function of sacred art was
the same: it translated religious experience and a metaphysical conception of
the world and of human existence into a concrete, representational form. This
translation was not considered wholly the work of man: the divinity also
participated by revealing himself to man and allowing himself to be perceived
in form or figure." [2]
In my opinion, whenever we see an iconoclastic form of
reformation, it is an angry regression and an overreacting constriction. It is
not good news. Examples include 8th century Orthodoxy, most 16th century
Protestants, and presently ISIS. This is not to say that both the Orthodox and
the Catholics did not substitute lots of mass produced madonnas with cherubs
and predictable icons for the kind of art that shouts "You must change
your life!" as the poet Rainer Maria Rilke describes in "Archaic
Torso of Apollo."
We don't need a reason for art. Beauty is for beauty's sake.
Art and music are not simply objects, but an experience of opening to mystical
awareness. In David Loy's words, ". . . perhaps the profound pleasure we
sometimes experience from listening to a Bach fugue or a Mozart piano concerto
is not a distraction from that process of attuning, nor even a side-effect of
it, but is that attuning. What is the non-dual experience if not such an
attunement? Nor need that enjoyment be understood subjectively. If the whole of
creation groans and travails in pain together (Romans 8:22), does it not also
leap for joy together, in us--or rather, as us?" [3]
My first thirteen years of Franciscan formation included
daily, well-disciplined singing of magnificent Gregorian chants. People would
arrive early in the dark morning just to listen to the friars climb and descend
our calm but mellifluous scales of pure tonality, and often left when we
started the wordy parts of the service. They had already received the healing
message--it is a good and coherent world and I am a part of it.
References:
[1] Joseph
Campbell with Bill Moyers, The Power of Myth (Anchor Books: 1988), 5, 14, 65.
[2] Mircea
Eliade, edited by Diane Apostolos-Cappadona, Symbolism, the Sacred, & the
Arts (Continuum: 1992), 55.
[3] David
Loy, Nonduality: A Study in Comparative Philosophy (Harmony Books: 1998), 302.
Poetry and Religion
Robert Frost wrote that great poetry "begins as a lump
in the throat . . . a homesickness, a lovesickness." Poetry stirs
something you can't explain. When it comes, you just know that it is given out
of nowhere. That's when you experience radical grace. Poets try to find the
perfect word to name the inner experience. The goal of great poetry is to get
right to the heart of the experience so that it resonates with your own inner
knowing and you can say, "Yes! That is true!"
Before 500 BCE, religion and poetry were largely the same
thing. People did not presume to be able to define the Mystery. They looked for
words that could describe the mystery. Poetry doesn't claim to be a perfect
description as dogma foolishly does. It's a "hint half guessed," to
use T. S. Eliot's phrase. That's why poetry seduces you and entices you into
being a searcher for the Mystery yourself. It creates the heart leap, the gasp of
breath, inspiring you to go further and deeper; you want to fill in the blanks
for yourself.
Poetry does this by speaking in metaphors. All religious
language is metaphor by necessity. It's always pointing toward this Mystery
that you don't know until you have experienced it. Without the experience, the
metaphors largely remain empty. I think this has led to the ineffectiveness of
much organized religion. The metaphors religions use are usually true, but we
too often defend the words instead of seeking the experience itself. Merton
once said that when you hear Jesus say that you must "eat my flesh and
drink my blood" you are supposed to stop breathing for a few minutes.
Instead we just argue about it.
The word metaphor comes from the Greek and means "to
carry across"--to carry a meaning across, to carry you across. If you're
still living mostly out of the left brain, you think that the word has to
perfectly define. But the right brain realizes that the better way to describe
the moment is through a metaphor, indirectly. Probably the most quoted lines
from Emily Dickinson are, "Tell all the truth but tell it slant -- / . . .
/ The Truth must dazzle gradually / Or every man be blind --." [1]
I'm convinced this is the present impasse with so much of
institutional religion: that we have for centuries "perfectly"
defined, delineated, and described the Mystery. And all you have to do is
believe your denomination's dogmatic definitions and you are a member in good
standing. This is not working. It is not transforming people.
C. G. Jung--whom I'll introduce during the next two weeks of
meditations--did not consider himself an opponent of Christianity, but wanted
to be its "pastor" to re-enliven its life changing myths and
metaphors. He looked at his father and his six uncles, who were all Swiss
Reformed pastors, and he knew they were not happy, generative, or in love. For
them it was all just "a human commandment, a lesson memorized"
(Isaiah 29:13). Jung believed that the course of Jesus' life was the perfect
map for the transformative journey--if only people would go inside their own
souls.
I think poetry gives you resonance more than logical proof,
and resonance is much more healing and integrating. It resounds inside of you.
It evokes and calls forth a deeper self. That is the power of good poetry and
why poetry can work so deeply. When religion becomes mere philosophy, accurate
definitions, moralisms about others, rituals and dogmas in the head--that is
the beginning of the end of religion as actual transformation.
Now no one knows
what to do with their pain except project it onto other people.
Mary Oliver, one of my favorite poets, says, "Poetry is
a life-cherishing force, for poems are not words, after all, but fires for the
coal, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread for the
hungry." [2]
References:
Adapted from
Richard Rohr, "Poetry and Prayer," unpublished talks (Center for
Action and Contemplation: 2005) and Franciscan Mysticism: I Am That Which I AM
Seeking (Center for Action and Contemplation: 2012), disc 1, CD, MP3 download.
[1] Emily
Dickinson, ed. by Ralph W. Franklin, "Tell all the truth but tell it
slant" from The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Reading Edition (The Belknap
Press of Harvard University Press: 1998).
[2] Mary
Oliver, A Poetry Handbook: A Prose Guide to Understanding and Writing Poetry
(Mariner Books: 1994).
Poetry as Gateway
In a recent webcast here, Mirabai Starr said, "Poetry
is a gateway into unitive consciousness. It knocks on the doors of the heart
and the heart opens. Poets speak truth in a very naked way that bypasses the
rational mind. Poetry evokes, rather than describes." [1]
I believe poetry can help us connect with our True Self,
uninhibited by ego's needs for certitude and security. A good poem can open us
to experience Reality and let it shatter the walls that protect our falsity.
Kabir (c. 1440-1580) was a religious reformer who "achieved a remarkable
synthesis of Hindu, Muslim, and even Christian belief." [2] He was an
artist and musician, and his poems were probably originally songs. Sit with
Kabir's metaphor of unitive consciousness: "All know that the drop merges
into the ocean, but few know that the ocean merges into the drop."
Now let your heart open as you read this poem by Rainer
Maria Rilke (1875-1926). It may be worth learning German, just to read this
poem in its original form!
I'm too alone in the world, yet not
alone enough
to make each hour holy.
I'm too small in the world, yet not small
enough
to be simply in your presence, like
a thing--
just as it is.
I want to know my own will
and to move with it.
And I want, in the hushed moments
when the nameless draws near,
to be among the wise ones--
or alone.
I want to mirror your immensity.
I want never to be too weak or too
old
to bear the heavy, lurching image
of you.
I want to unfold.
Let no place in me hold itself
closed,
for where I am closed, I am false.
I want to stay clear in your sight.
I would describe myself
like a landscape I've studied
at length, in detail;
like a word I'm coming to
understand;
like a pitcher I pour from at
mealtime;
like my mother's face;
like a ship that carried me
when the waters raged. [3]
References:
[1] Mirabai
Starr, Unitive Consciousness: An Eastern Perspective, an unpublished webcast
(Center for Actionand Contemplation: 2015).
[2] Daniel
Ladinsky, Love Poems from God: Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West,
(Penguin Compass: 2002), 209.
[3] Anita
Barrows and Joanna Macy, trans., Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God
(Riverhead Books: 1996), 67-68. Used with permission.
No comments:
Post a Comment