Pure of Heart

Not grey-dwellers of putrid sewers

who traverse the pipe-lines of common filth

like rats scouring for discarded trash

No!  This crowd's a stranger mix

They're weirdos who are out-of-step

They're Spirit-freed, fired for flight

for journeys into the fray and strife

of darkened lives wrestling with life

their mouths enthused with Word and song

for lips and heads and hearts and hands

un-enclosed in wants that surely fail

They are the pure of heart

whose lives are packed with God's caring sense

for broken bods and needs unmet

a God for all and all in God

whose eyes are mirrors reflecting Light

are panes drawing in and giving back 

*Reflections of Alan Jones:

  -"All the contradictions are to be found in me, according as the wind turns and changes. (Montaigne)"  If we are to move ahead in our pilgrimage, we will have to give up our longing for consistency.

  -Allow yourself to think about your self as a work-in progress, a work of art.  We learn about being human by imitation and repetition.  Art's mystery lies in the fact that every repetition or performance is unique and unrepeatable.  Just like you.  Allow for the possibility of revelation.

  -Being human is like learning a craft, and becoming part of a tradition.  We are in it together.  Salvation is social.

  -...we learn by paying attention, by listening, by practice.  

Provocateur

I paused this morning to peer through the mirror

to gaze through eyes both green and grey

to plumb the visage upon the glass

I stared to see beyond beyond

to cross into some heart and soul 

to touch The Face upon each face

my face, Christ's face, facing each face

The image stands curious

on a morning after bath

as the world awakens to day

and I to questions of  Life

This icon I bear, is it Christ?

Is he the one staring back at me?

If he's the one, then who are the others?

Is his face the mirror of their eyes

the molding of their lips

the coloring of their skin

the silence of their cries

the laughter of their hearts?

*Every person wants to be loved by someone, in someway, for nothing...and God is the only One who can, who will and does love us, absolutely, in this way.  We persons must strive to imitate God  in our loving. 

*Reflections of Alan Jones:

  -...we are all actors playing parts (by turns, tragic and comic) in a drama of infinite variety.  We cannot avoid playing a role.  Sometimes we are the audience; sometimes the victim; sometimes the righteous judge or the wronged lover.  The roles change, although some of us prefer certain roles in life that we play little else: the martyred mother, the angry father, the rebellious child.

  -If we play a role long enough we can become it, and so we find it hard at the end of our performance to take off the costume, remove the make-up, and allow ourselves the right (as scary as it is sometimes) to stand naked, for even a few moments.

  -...while the drama of life appeared a hit-and-miss affair, I had the power to make the best of it.

  -"There are no small rolls, only small actors," and I would not have believed it had I known it.

Prophets on high

What's at the end of the rainbow?  Gold?

Dreams and hopes more durable than gold?

Porous faith siding with doubt?

Unbelief struggling midst moist tears?

Rainbows arrive after the storm

after the thunder and clapping rolls round the sky

bending their soft frame toward the earth

arching their backs in adoration toward God.

Rainbows never birth themselves.

Brightened by the sun's warming light

their flesh glows with prisms of hope.

They are the curve of prayer from on high

mystics bowed in the moistured sky

proclaiming love, tossing fear aside.

Rainbows are prophets hovering in the sky

covenantal promises for those looking high.

*...when do men fall on their brothers with mighty weapons and bloody acts?  They do such if they do not know that their brother is themselves.

-Carl Jung

*...nothing is more dangerous than to play the hero.

-Carl Jung

*...solitude leads one away from other people only to bring you closer to them once you are able to face yourself in your entirety.

-Carl Jung

*Reflections of Alan Jones:

  -Novelist Walter Percy wrote somewhere that artists and people of the Spirit are often like the canaries people used to send down the coal mines to see if the air was sweet and safe enough to breath.  Some people are like that.  They are sent ahead of us to test the air.  And some of them suffer greatly on our behalf so that we can breathe.  It may sound grim to affirm (also with Walker Percy) that the person of faith is an ex-suicide, the one who has faced death and said to herself, "I may as well live!"  She can get up in the morning and laugh and go on to work because she doesn't have to.

  -Prayer is a daily placing oneself on the threshold of death.  It helps us anticipate and participate in our dying, and this is good news because it also means we participate in the new life of the Spirit. The deal is this.  You wake up!  You're alive!  You win!

  -"Surfaces can be seen, but depths must be interpreted."

  -Truth is also fiction.  Truth is a story.  And stories lie as well as tell the truth.  We shall have to take care.

porter

guest welcoming-guardian  of my spirit

host to visitors and banisher of doom

the entrance to my cave needs vigilant watching

for more than bats in my belfry buzz

and wolves prowl at the inner door

to snatch the lambs pasturing 'bout my core

you know the sound of my cry

you speak your words in dream-land tongues

bearing truth as a messenger to me

shepherd clothed as an open door

you guard against danger lurking ahead

you are assurance seven-fold

*Self-definition is the highest form of integrity.

-Lethe Bashar

*Better to be casts out of the church than to deny Christ.

-Anne Hutchinson

*"...when do men fall on their brothers with mighty weapons and bloody acts? They do such if they do not know that their brother is themselves."

*Reflections of Alan Jones:

-..."the truth that matters to people is not factual truth but moral truth; not a narrative that tells what happened but a narrative that explains why it happened and who is responsible."

-Choosing the prism through which we see the world is a matter of faith.

-...film director Ermanno Olmi, during the presentation of a letter by Pope John Paul II to artists at the Vatican in April, 1999, said in an interview printed in Italy Daily, "The night before the start of NATO they were showing Roberto Begnini's Life is Beautiful in Belgrade, and everyone was going there to be moved by this representation of the sacredness of life.  So I ask myself how much art really counts for in people's lives."

Photo

I sat alone

sad and bored

mopishly suppressed

by the dead TV set

near Lenny

and a dying pine

tinseled for Christmas

as Vincent smiled

and Edward stared

near Mama

behind the photo box

awaiting the snap

and the slow birth of Christ 

*Reflections of Alan Jones:

  -It is one thing, therefore, to assemble the facts but quite another to find a story that is faithful to the facts.

  -Life is a kind of dance and we have to learn the steps.

  -If you knew all there was to know about me, would you still love me?

  -...the deep truth of the spiritual life is that we can begin again, we can be born anew.

  -The question is which is greater, your sin or God's love?

  -"And all the wickedness in the world that man might work or think is no more to the mercy of God than a live coal dropped into the sea."

  -We have a double task, then, of being as clear and accurate as we can in our truth-telling but also of knowing how the various truths relate to one another.  That relationship will depend on the story we tell and where, in the scheme of things, we place all the actors in the drama.

  -As I grow spiritually, can I discern that compassion, mercy, tenderness, and generosity are on the side of truth rather than judgmentalism, resentment, and vindictiveness? 

perhaps

perhaps i should kneel and pray

perhaps i should sit nakedly still

perhaps i should catch you on tv

perhaps hope must trust to be screened

perhaps i should trust queries and doubts

perhaps in the morning answers will rise

perhaps you're kneeling by my side

perhaps the stillness is your robe

perhaps solitude dresses your silence

perhaps there's none like you upon earth

perhaps, perhaps, perhaps

i'll silently sit, patiently awaiting you

*Reflections of Alan Jones:

  -What makes us choose a particular story, a particular narrative, by which to interpret our experience and not another?

  -As the philosopher Diogenes Allen writes, "When we treat other people as objects subordinate to our goals, their mystery has no effect on us.  The larger mystery into which genuine personal encounter can lead us never becomes open to us".  Sometimes we use force to protect us from the mystery of others.  Our desire for control cuts us off from the depths of the truth that comes to us only when we are available to the others.  The necessity of being available to others in order to achieve a deeper kind of truth understandably makes us nervous.  We take refuge in "facts", in the hard truths of science.  Facts, after all, are more reliable than people.  Middle C is always middle C.  Better to stay with what we know than leap into the abyss of the unknown and untried. 

  -When life is simply one thing after another, with no connecting narrative, what are we to do?

  -What happens when there aren't any certainties left to undermine?

  -We should take care what stories we tell ourselves about ourselves, and yet the point is, we cannot do without a story of some sort.  The facts demand it.

  -Literalism is the enemy of truth in this deepest sense because its lens is too narrow.

  -One of the early Christians accused the heretics of taking all the bits and pieces of the life and work of Christ and assembling them into the head of a fox instead of the face of Jesus.

other than

being other than

what one is or

who one has

striven to be or

being both in 

the pod like 

peas split and 

flowering-siamese

is a 

schizophrenic pull

in the heart of 

ones life

tearing it into

fragments and strife.

who'd bow to 

the pressure and pow'r

each pines to stage

in one's life:

artisan-parent

parenting-priest

celebrants of spirits dancing

in the valley of ones dreams

expressing and urging

exploding into

firework-facets 

of the Divine Within?

i know not which 

yearning union of 

the twos

but might not both 

be heard

in some maniacal twirl

spinning for

a side of each?

*Reflections of Alan Jones:

  -What does it take for you to be truly at home with yourself, to be honored in your deepest self?

  -We do not have to give up on our ideals, provided we know our need for forgiveness.

  -The Greek word for truth is aletheia - it has the word lethe in the middle of it, the river of forgetfulness.  Truth-telling uncovers what has been repressed and forgotten.  It is a form of restoration for the soul.

  -Being human involves our bearing a kind of open wound, the sign of a future over which we have no control and in which the choices we make have unforeseen and unintended consequences. 

  -The longing for truth has to do with being recognized, desired, and loved.  God sees, recognizes and loves us.  This is how one tradition has tried to speak of the Absolute Truth, as sustaining Love. The search for truth and truthfulness, for trust and integrity, means we are willing to seek out the root of our longing to be in relationships that recognize and respect us.

our personal gods are hungry

Moloch feeds on the "False":

erratic, soulless

rootless chasings

gossamer-dreams

of cowards and slaves

lying, seducing

drawing into bondage

via divergent pursuits

or one's own struggling self

we fly past Christ

past his crucifixion

floating on foggy paths

into the jaws of greed

into the weaknesses of gods

into their birthing gloom

yet, here He always stands

welcoming into His Home

Reflections of Alan Jones:

-Human beings can never quite do justice to the inner truth of things.  Our speech is never completely accurate; in facet, we can say true things falsely, speak the literal truth and still be untrustworthy.

-When we speak and mean what we say, and try to act on what we say and mean, we move closer to what we are meant to be.

-Language, then, forms us rather than informs us.  When it is corrupted, other corruptions follow. George Orwell's horror story 1984 is a parable about what happens when words are cut off from their true meanings.  In Dante's Inferno, the deepest circle of hell is deceit and betrayal.  The corruption of language means the breakdown of human relations.  It is a form of forgery.  When the currency of human interaction is counterfeit we are all lost.  Words are our means of communication.  Pollute our relationships with flattery and deceit, our language with lies and propaganda, our common life with the self-serving use of images, and what happens?  We can no longer reach each other, and, what is worse, we lose touch with ourselves.

on his bed writing

laying on his bed writing

thoughts arose from the author's innards

like a lightening rod of blood shot through

it stoked the fire smoldering in his womb

sensations of parenting rose as a sweeping force

moistening his mind with its creative beat

it was like a stream of sperms bearing a million births

swimming home to share their bliss

he knew not which child would birth

but the wonder-gift was in the flow

*To Trinity

when

I am

no longer

more 

or 

less

than

you

or

you

to

me

we

one

we 

ring

we

Trinity

   

                                                  -Jerry Schroeder, Cap.

*Reflections of Alan Jones:

  -We resist admitting that there are levels of truth (some truths are not as important as others) and find it annoying that something could be true on one level and not on another.

  -We realized how dangerous the verb to be is, especially when we allow a minor - if significant - truth about someone (John is an alcoholic) to define reality.  John is an alcoholic, but that is nor all he is; to say so is a lie.

  -Theologian Charles Williams once pointed out that the word is either spiritual truth or verbal filth.  Human beings can never quite do justice to the inner truth of things.  Our speech is never completely accurate; in fact, we can say true things falsely, speak the literal truth and still be untrustworthy.

  -When we speak and mean what we say, and try to act on what we say and mean, we move closer to what we are meant to be.

  -Integrity, in the end, is a gift rather than an achievement.

On the edge of anger

On the edge of anger

one stands with teeth wired

holding a scream while poised to bite

like vampires, those available throats

of victims for blood

to taste their pain

or chew them out

On the edge of anger

toxins bubble

through voice and stance

looking for victims

to poison their hearts

On the edge of anger

revenge strikes hard

with swift blows 

like rattlers, strollers

on a day-out

suspecting no dangers

having their moment of fun

On the edge of anger

anything could happen

standing on a cliff

leaning 'gainst a rock

unbalanced on the bluff

On the edge of anger

we grit our teeth

look beyond our feet

grabbing a gun

forgetting how to speak

to do something evil

to harm the errant one

teaching them a lesson

for being our irritant

*Reflections of Alan Jones:

  -"Surfaces can be seen, but depths must be interpreted." (quoting Ken Wilbur, the philosopher).

  -When trust becomes a matter of doubt in human relations, something incalculable is lost.  Think of our propensity for litigation and for throwing people in jail, for relying on legal controls to regulate personal life when only forgiveness and reconciliation will work.

  -Life falls apart when there are no shared stories embodying agreed-upon values.

  -These are among the many forces in the world that erode the conviction that each of us is responsible for our actions and therefore we are able to trust each other.  We are more helpless than ever before the power of the pressures of society and its special interest groups.  If I am to trust you and you are to trust me, both of us have to be reasonably confident that the other is responsible for his or her actions.  Without that moral compass we are lost.  A world of individuals who cannot trust one another is a form of hell.

observations on a day of watching

i.

we're like dogs that bark

seeking attention

protecting nothing

ii.

like dogs gathered about a bitch in heat

teen boys pack about girls

sashaying past the school

iii.

a couple makes waves on the bank

as a ship sails by at slow pace

rhyming with their grace

iv.

women don't stand when they pee

their wrath does not sit when it flares

love swaying either way

v.

our bodies are ghosts

they frighten us

we cover and run

*Understand

under

a hint

at being

more

than I

can

imagine

there

I want to

stand

                                                  -Jerry Schroeder, Cap.

*Reflections of Alan Jones:

  -The deeper we get into the subject of truth-telling, the more complex it becomes.

  -If I want to know the truth about you, I have to rely on your revealing something of your inner self.

  -Remember, only love can be entrusted with the truth.

  -You have to go deeper than the facts if you want to know the truth of who I am, and swim in the deep waters of interpretation.  How we interpret each other will depend on the kind of language we speak and the inner dictionaries available to us. Who am I will be filtered through the grid of your hopes and fears.  Who you are will be subject to the same filtering.  It is not always pleasant, but there is no other way to fullness of life.

-