Sunday Night Reflections

Today I spent most the day doing my taxes, looking up information, and adding up all those things that you don't even get to take a deduction on. In the end, I'm getting money back. So in celebration, I decided to walk down the street to my new favorite place: Creeps and Waffles. It's a Columbian restuarant that employs only head-of-the-household women. They train them very well and teach them all aspects of the business. Not only is the place immaculate, but friendly, and quite formal. Their specialties are homemade ice cream, as well as using only native grown foods of Peru. So I took the 5 minute walk down to the restuarant and found a nice little table outside to have a cafe and ice cream.

It was strange tonight, because I think it's beginning to get cool, almost like a little bit of "Fall" in the air. Logically, it makes sense that Fall is coming, but it is very weird to think that Fall comes in March/April.

Tonight I brought a notebook and a pen. My task was to begin to write my life story. Sounds like something strange, but as part of my spiritual meditations, my spiritual director encouraged me to begin to write my life story down, just the events, no feelings. At first, it was hard to think about my first memories, but as I began to write, I remembered more and more. It was almost like the walls to my memory were crumbling.

For some reason I have been resistant to writing my story, perhaps it was because there were things I didn't want to remember, maybe it was because I don't enjoy writing that much, or maybe it was because I like to remain a mystery, even to myself. Whatever the cause, it was an eye-opening experience.

I reflected upon the first time I learned how to ride a bike, my first love (Lindy), stupid things that I said when I was 5 (like when I announced to my pre-k class that when I become President, I'm going to bomb Mexico and make it the 51st US State, only to make a Mexican boy in my class cry). These memories and reflections don't seem like anything material, but as I think that we are always adapting, and our earliest memories are the foundation of who we are today. If we don't remember these, if we do understand them, then how are we to grow as human beings?

I also reflected upon how much I love Peruvian desserts...

What is Freedom?

So today was a big day for a lot of people. We've heard a lot of talk about freedom lately, about hope, about fear, and about people suffering. It's made me very reflective, and since I spend a lot more time with spiritual readings, prayer, and reflections, I have a few things that I've read/thought about that I'd like to share.

Fear:

"...if God's moral judgement differs from ours so that our 'black' may be His
'white', we can mean nothing by calling Him good; for to say 'God is good',
while asserting that His goodness is wholly other than ours, is really only to
say 'God is we know not what'. And an utterly unkown quality in God cannot give
us moral grounds for loving or obeying Him. If He is not (in our sense) 'good'
we shall obey, if at all, only through fear-and should be equally ready to obey
an ominpotent Fiend."

A couple of thoughts here: If I believe God exists, why do I try to understand what is 'good.' Is it out of fear as CS Lewis questions? No, because there are things that I fear in this world, but do not worship. Rather, I believe were search for 'good', albiet in our own way, because we were created to do 'good', in His image and likeness. We receive the gift of joy, and we know well when we have done something good!

"...The escape from this dilemma depends on observing what happens, in human
relations, when the man of inferior moral standards enters the society of those
who are better and wiser than he and gradullay learns to accept their
standards, a process which, as it happens, I can describe fairly accurately,
since I have undergone it...The new moral judgements never enter the minds as
mere reversals (though they do reverse them) of previous judgements but 'as
lords that are certainly expected'. You can have no doubt in the direction that
you are moving; they are more like good than the little shreds of good you
already had, but are, in a sense, continous with them. But the great test is
that the recognition of the new standards is accompanied with the sense of shame
and guilt; one is conscous of having blundered into society that one is unfit
for."

Boy, does this hit home. I've been here for less than two weeks now, but being surrounded by such holy, hardworking, selfless people has rubbed off on me. Some of my habbits are already changing, humility is increasing, and I'm learning much more kindness (in a lot of ways because I can only show my affection, not through words, but actions!).

Love and Hope:

"...There is kindness in Love: but Love and kindness are not coterminous,
and when kindness is separated from the other elements of Love, it involves a
certain fundamental indifference to its object, and even something like contempt
of it. Kindness consents very readilty to the removal of its object-we have all
met people whose kindness to animals is constantly leading them to kill animals
lest they should suffer. Kindness, merely as such, cares not whether the object
becomes good or bad, provided only that it escapes suffering...It is for people
whom we care nothing about that we demand happiness on any terms: with our
friends, our lovers, our children, we are exacting and would rather see them
suffer much than be happy in contemptible and estranging modes..."

I had to read this section a couple times for it to really sink in. "We would rather see them suffer much than be happy in contemptible and estranging modes..." This is pretty deep, but very simple.

The first example that comes to mind is extreme, but it helps the analogy: if you see somebody addicted to something (drugs, alcohol, gambling, etc.), you see them 'happy' when they're doing it, but you know that in the long run it's going to be a disaster. When you finally convince them to change their course, it's painful (very painful!), but you know that this suffering that you're encouraging them and helping them through, is actually out of love!

To me, this is a huge problem in our society today. We are all yuppies (me included!) and we avoid suffering. We'd rather be addicted and keep taking our drugs (whatever our addiction may be), instead of purifying our lives and forming ourselves towards God's Will.

Freedom, wild vs tame dogs:

"The relation between Creator and creature is, of course, unique, and
cannot be paralleled by any relations between one creature and another. God is
both further from us, and nearer to us, than any other being. He is further from
us because of the sheer difference between us...Another type is the love of a
man for a beast-a relation constantly used in Scripture to symbolize the
relation between God and men; 'we are his people and the sheep that he
shepherds.'...Its great merit lies in the fact that the associate of (say) man
and dog is primarily for the man's sake: he tames the dog primarily that he may
love it, not that it may love him, and that it may serve him, not that he may
service it. Yet at the same time, the dog's inerests are not sacrificed to the
man's.

The one end (that he may love it) cannot be fully attained unless it also,
in its fashion, loves him, nor can it serve him unless he, in a different
fashion serves it, Now just because the dog is by human standards one of the
'best' of irrational creatures, and a proper object for a man to love man
interferes with the dog and makes in more lovable than it was in mere
nature.

In its state of nature it has a smell, and habits, which frustrate man's
love: he washes it, house trains it, teaches it not to steal, and is so enabled
to love it completely. To the puppy the whole proceeding would seem, if it were
a theologian, to cast grave doubts on the 'goodness' of man: but the full grown
and full trained dog, larger, healthier, and longer-lived than the wild dog, and
admitted, as it were by Grace, to a whole world of affections, loyalties,
interests, and comforst entirely beyond its animal destiny, would have no
doubts.

It will be noted that the man takes all these pains with the dog, only
because it is an animal high in the scale. he does not house train the earwig or
give baths to centipedes. We may wish, indeed, that we were of so little account
to God that He left us alone to follow our natural impulses-that He would give
over trying to train us into something so unlike our natural sleves; but once
again, we are not asking not for more love, but for less!"

Phew, there's a lot going on here! To me, however, there's a very simple theme: God has chosen humanity to Love and we are better off by allowing Him to Love us!

We are the highest on the scale, again created in His image and likeness. Left to our own devices, we are like the wild dog. Yet, God feeds us, He calls us in to be warmed by the fire of His Love. He shares with us his Law, which makes us healthier and long-lived. Just like dogs, we sometimes stray. Maybe we steal something off the table when nobody's looking.

Why should we do that when we know we'll get feed?

Because it's our instinct, our free will.

Because our Master loves us, He will punish us, but He allows the suffering out of Love!