Encounter

Your still, small voice called

from no where to somewhere

from questions to answers

from myst'ry to sureness

and scared poor Elijah

upon the mount of Horeb

Your word is a "no-word"

safely wrapped in a gathered mist

a promise spake in a "nothing-said"

a strong assurance midst disbelief

*Thoughts of Alan Jones:

  -The believer is often bedeviled by a neurotic aim at perfection.  Indeed, it is acceptable in psychoanalytical circles that perfectionism inhibits human growth and saps our capacity for delighting in life.  And the great demand of religion is, of course, "Be ye perfect!"  Perfectionism uncovers those compulsions that drive us to bring into being  a tyrannical, idealized self.  And if the idealized self cannot make it, then so much the worse for others and the world.

  -We can, in short, cope with the world by strategies of seduction, aggressiveness, or withdrawal. These are the neurotic forms of three basis movements that are important to all of us: to give affection, to stand up for oneself, and to keep apart on certain occasions.  These have their religious counterparts: the longings for intimacy, the desire to belong without being swallowed up, and the hope for a true identity in God.

  -The saint who thinks he casts no shadow is very dangerous.  That is why, traditionally, the two marks of the saint are joy and penitance:  joy because one knows that one is not God, and yet with God all things are possible.  The saint knows that perfection rests in divinity and not in the ability of the believer to negotiate reality so that one "comes off best."  The saint knows that he or she is not God, and yet knows how easily one can forget this simple fact.  The saint knows about darkness and shadows that cloud judgement.

Easter Night

Easter night, sitting 'neath a frosted light

I pen, in silence, words of the waning day

and sense the Savior's breath in the cool night air

coaxing me toward sleep and the bed that cares.

This day, bright-full  of  hallelujahs and drunk with praise

pulled my thoughts toward sin and grace.

The Resurrection is sure more than tombs swept clean

and Life's aglow with promises the future seeds.

In meditation sits the guru of my thoughts

unsure which path of quiet to pursue.

Solitude's love enfolds the cells of my flesh

and calls out, "Empty!", her sweet embrace.

For sure we must greet Death by our self

and feel the sisterly kiss of her determined lips.

In this lone-time on the Easter night

the rising of Jesus offers light.

*Thoughts of Alan Jones:

  -A cure through love is what we all want, and this cure is promised us in the Gospel.

  -As a believer, I can all too easily fall into the trap of trying to play a clever and exciting game with myself and others, particularly if I can be "helpful"  and keep my distance at the same time.  To be helpful and to feel superior seem sometimes to enter "the best of all possible worlds."

  -What does it mean to continue believing when something is going on inside us that appears to be beyond our endurance?

That Day of Oh

Like white-lighting flashing across the ev'ning sky

that Day of Oh will whip forth from my mouth

Like hungry-eagles swooping down upon a meal

that Day of Oh will fly forth from my lips

Like sunbeam-mornings breaking fresh upon the day

that Day of Oh will shine from within my face

That Day of Oh will reveal the myst'ries weaving through my life

and hang upon the walls images laying about my soul

Then all scattered pieces  of my life's collage

will unfold and display the tapestry of my life

That Day of Oh will hail the birth of insights and wisdom

will cement the broken and scattered fragments along my path

molding a mosaic One Craftsman could have overseen

I'll be free to grasp the Darkness and harvest Awakened Light

Thoughts of Alan Jones:

-Contemplation (like art) requires of us a willingness to be transformed.

-"We either contemplate or we exploit."  We either see things and persons with reverence and awe,  and therefore treat them as genuinely other than ourselves; or, we appropriate them, and manipulate them for our own purposes.

That moment came

when words were smite

not messengers of life

So, I stopped the words

and listened to life

to hear and read

what had not been read

*Thoughts of Alan Jones:

  -The Church is always in need of...followers of different ways of believing, whether they are prophets, contemplatives, or people with a special vocation.

  -...prophets and contemplatives need the institution, for without it they have nothing against which to rub.

  -I have great love and reverence for the institution.  In fact, the more I try to follow the way of believing that I've been describing the more I appreciate the ordinary life of the Church.  It is a question of balance.  The more I follow the apophatic way, the more I need to be nourished by the images from the Bible and from the Liturgy.

  -These images point me in the direction I wish to go, but they are not the way itself. The way is a contemplative one, which simply means looking at someone or something without absorbing them into our little world of ideas and values.  Contemplation means seeing what is there and refusing to hallucinate so that we see only what we want to see.  We then wait to receive what chooses to reveal itself (as in the Greek work aletheia, which literally means to uncover.  The truth then, is that which reveals or uncovers itself). It means being attentive to whatever and whoever is there as truly other than ourselves.  This is what is suggested by the word aesthetic, which strictly means seeing thing in such a way that the viewer is changed by what he or she sees.  Perhaps that is why artists in totalitarian countries are often locked up.  They help people see a new world through their art, and that is dangerous to the existing totalitarian political system.

tears know me

 not as cascades 

but as sighs

as moist corners

of leaking glands

yearning to scrub 

my eyes clean

clear of crusted years

of dirt-mound mem'ries

and dulled emotions

which like muzzled dogs

strain to romp and bark

with a freedom found

chiseled in the heart 

*Thoughts of Alan Jones:

  -We have a tendency to make ideas into things, and so we're tempted to take our way of believing or our way of thinking and imagine that our way is the only right and sane one there is.  We might  add our own anathemas against those who claim that the "ideas" of Marx, Darwin, Freud, Jung and Uncle Sam have real existence!

  -...the Church easily gets seduced by the values of the prevailing culture.

  -The Church is always in need of ...followers of different ways of believing, whether they be prophets, contemplatives, or people with a special vocation.

Dis-Spirited

Your carcass lays dispirited

emptied of life

like the bottle in your hand

searching for the Spirit

midst highs that drown

cloaking your suff'ring

dulling the nightmares

 strolling by

You swill with a similar someone

that laughter might rise

and your garbled talk supply

what's missing all the time

Now laying drunk on the  ground

you witness to your flight

and the shallowness of brotherhood

bottled against the Light

*Thoughts of Alan Jones:

  -Can we hope to get away from self-preoccupation altogether?  We can try.  The effort is worth it, because  in seeking to pass through the narrow gate  one begins to learn a little of what it is to love.  It is hard, because it means looking and being temporarily blinded by what one sees. "There be in God, some say, a deep dazzling darkness," wrote a seventeenth-century poet, echoing the earlier tradition of the Eastern Christians.  This darkness forces us to talk about God only in terms of negatives, of what God is not.  When we use positive terms, which we must on occasion, we must remember then that we are actually talking about an idea of God - just as when we see moonlight, we must remind ourselves that we are really seeing the sun's reflected rays.

  -We can only say that God is both unknowable and inexhaustible.  The Christian believes that this unknowable and inexhaustible God has been revealed to us in Jesus Christ, and that it is after his image that we are made. That is a lot to swallow.  To really believe we are made in his image means a revolution in self-understanding.  "I" would have to be understood in terms not only of the life death and resurrection of Jesus; "I" would suddenly become unknowable and inexhaustible, and so would everyone else.  It would means giving up my patterns of knowing and feeling with regard to God and the world.  The implications of this for self-understanding are momentous.  Just as God is "hidden" from us, so too are we "hidden" from ourselves and from each other.

  -Any attempts to trap God in an image, form, or figure is both futile and dangerous; dangerous because God becomes "God" - and terrible things have been and are done in the name of "God".

  -...the formlessness is for the sake of freedom and expansiveness; because the things that matter, like love and truth, shrivel and die when they are held captive too long in an image or idea.

dancing before God

with ribbons of air

riding on my hands

i am a troubadour of yore

feet stirring to song

my body bounding with Spring

i am a joy-child

 leaping in the open air

dressed in a gown of light

free in the arena of life

-If Death doesn't get you, somethin' else will.

*Thoughts of Alan Jones:

  -We cannot live without images and pictures, and yet they always fall short of the reality.

  -If a worshipper should makes a mistake, do you not think that God will know his/her intent?

  -Feeling, not understanding, is very much a part of popular North American religion.  To suggest that there might be something beyond thought and feeling sounds very strange, and very threatening. Religion in our culture has become something of a commodity.  We want to possess as much "religion" as we can in order to enjoy the emotional satisfaction it brings.

Violated bones

The trailing exhaust

that covered him in its haze

that one brisk autumn morn

was a convenient screen

He dashed across the street

where care's absent need

scoured the street with eyes

long deprived of love

He hungered for care

searching for eyes to heal him

touch him with a savior's glance

binding his face in a smile

Not much, just a touch

a friendly glace, absent lust

that need and that alone

would sooth his aching and violated bones

*All are in Christ and Christ is in all.

*Sometimes we sin because we don't "know" what else to do...and God understands.

Thoughts of Alan Jones:

  -What do we see if we take the time to look?  We see disconnection, absurdity, and glory - certainly these are contradictory things.  If we look hard enough, we see a great deal of glory and promise.  Unfortunately, our vision  is often distorted by pain and suffering.  But we need to look at pain and suffering if we are to see past then to the glory and the promise.  There is real glory in a way of believing that tries to be honest about what it sees.  This has, at least, the promise of maturity.

  -The two approaches of the spiritual path belong together.  It cannot be overemphasized that they are complementary: negation and affirmation are the negative and positive poles of a fully charged battery.  While one side says "Yes" to images, ideas, metaphors, the other side says "No" or is silent. This dialectic is vital for the transmission of life and energy. Without one or other of the poles there is death.

  -We cannot live without images and pictures, and yet they always fall short of the reality.

Vignettes of people on the edge of despair

These are the thousand statistics outside the news printed on a page

being in and out of fashion again and again

though an occasional by-line will speak well of these friends

Death arrives as soon as life is met

Folks drag butt through the rubble of hope

as one house burns midst choking smoke

A stray shot has blown some Black away

a young punk designed for the early grave

his nick-name remembered as a memento soon forgot

The lawns display the plastic arts of our time

McDonald cups lounge against a fence

decorating the grass along with Wendy's and such

No pink flamingos in the cluttered fields

but discarded tires sculpted in piles

along pathways a thousand feet have dug

Some with brown-bags lean against store facades

sometimes drunk steadily talking to someone

squatting in bare-buildings where grass and roaches roam

Store-front churches are monuments to decay

saving the saved holed-up within walls of bricks and shouts

praying for the damned while cursing the lost

the neighborhood's in despair but its spirit isn't crushed

partying and smoking and watching their butts

laughing midst tears seeping through their boasts

*Reflections of Alan Jones:

  -Politicians, religious leaders and teachers know of our longing to remain infantile.  It takes a spiritually mature person to enter the Kingdom of God as a little child.  We prefer to remain childish and have someone tell us what to believe. 

  -...no one would chose to follow a hard path if an easier one were available.  It seems to be a maxim of the spiritual life that on one undergoes spiritual or psychological growth and change willingly.  We are either dragged into it kicking and screaming or circumstances force us into the next scene of the human comedy.  Ironically, the institutional Church is often as obstacle to spiritual growth.   As we have seen, it has something of an investment in keeping its members in an infantile state.

  -The first imperative is, Look!  Looking means a contemplative willingness to see what is there in front of us without prematurely interpreting what we see.  The desert tradition claims that if we look long and accurately enough, the tears will begin to flow.  Thus the second imperative is, Weep!"  The fruit of honest contemplation is "the gift of tears"; and the sure sign that our attentiveness has been focused and honest and the tears cleansing is joy.  Joy is the fruit of desert patience. Thus the third imperative , Live!

Dance

"Take this 

all of you 

and eat."

She pointed her toe.

"This is my Blood

poured out for you.

She spun and  twirled

her body

His Body

in her who felt His song.

She spun like a hot-fire

a child needing to dance

before the Element of Earth

the gift to the People of God.

With a fresh and flaming smile

her face lifted the moment of joy

her frame alight 

with the wonder of childhood

attentive to holy awe.

I smiled at God's wondrous grace

as her mother grinned her Consecration hymn.

*Human beings can't do without formulas and dogma, but these must always be preceded by a way of being that expresses in action and receptivity the heart of what the formulas or dogmas are seeking to communicate.  In the end, faith comes not from indoctrination from the outside, but from the Spirit of God bursting out from inside us.

-Alan Jones

*The Christian life is a battle and a struggle, but it is not without humor.  We can laugh because the final victory has been won, and we can laugh because there are many ways of believing that truth.

-Alan Jones

*Probing doubt is the handmaid of faith.

-Alan Jones

*I don't want you to go away with the impression that there's any - you know- any inconveniences involved in the religious life.  I mean a lot of people don't take it up just because they think it's going to involve a certain amount of nasty application and perseverance -  you know what I mean?...As soon as we get out of chapel here, I hope you'll accept from me a little volume I've always admired..."God Is My Hobby."

-J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey

waiting for you to laugh

wanting you to laugh with the roar of abandon

from a belly aching with the joy of angels

to catch the sprites dancing springtime

turning cartwheels across your face

to witness the zebra's stripes giggling

while hyenas attentively pause to applaud

o what pleasure it would be to savor

to hear you laughing above the storm

*Of course, it does not matter whether you believe any of this or not.  All that matters here is fraternal love.

-Alan Jones

*It was at this point that I began to see a little more clearly the way of believing that I was seeking.  It is a way of hospitality that involves receiving others as lively images of God or as his possible messengers, regardless of whether they are believers or not.  The loving receptivity towards others is not dependent on their sharing our beliefs or opinions.

-Alan Jones

*...the Chinese proverb about wisdom: If you have two loaves, go and sell one and buy a lily.

-Alan Jones

Walk naked 'round the slumbering lake

Feel the breeze wrapping you in her refreshing silk

her sun warming the pores of your available flesh

Lay in the grass for the nectar-seeking bee

Roll in the chlorophyll greening  the soles of your feet

Whistle as if whittling a spirit on the air

Sing like a bird flirting with the neighbor's goose

Let your lungs open to freshness

like a babe born new to the earth

Be the womb receiving the Sperm of God

rejoicing at the graced-life lubricating your soul

Plunge deep into the water's darkness

deep into its subterranean holds

Meet her aquatic and abundant life

Speak her tongue with the creatures dwelling there

Laugh midst the chatter of  their bubbling voice

that their scales feel the sensations of your humorous flesh

Then rise from the depths embraced by the rolling winds

skipping across the fields like chipmunks gathering seeds

Taste full the freedom of this precious time

embracing the newness alive in you

*And if the good news is true, why are its public proclaimers such assholes and the proclamation itself such a weary used up thing?...As unacceptable as believers are, unbelievers are even worse...[The unbeliever] is in fact an insane person....The present-day Christian is either half-assed, nominal, lukewarm, hypocritical, sinful, or, if fervent, generally offensive and fanatical.  But he is not crazy. The present-day unbeliever is crazy as well as being an asshole - which is why I say he is a bigger asshole than the Christian because a crazy asshole is worse than a sane asshole....The rest of my life...shall be devoted to a search for a third alternative, a tertium quid - if there is one.  If not we are stuck with two alternatives: (1)believers, who are intolerable, and (2) unbelievers who are insane.

-Walker Percy quoted by Alan Jones

*A true revelation is a very disturbing event because it demands a response; and to respond to it means some kind of inner revolution.

-Alan Jones

*...when the "truth" beings to be at variance with belief, a pattern of self-deception and lying begins to emerge.  Ask Christian believers what they would do if they had to choose between Jesus Christ  and the Truth.

-Alan Jones