God’s mercy has dominion…even over our own will?

Is this what keeps our freedom in check?  Is this what allows us to have the total freedom given to us by God – is it his mercy? When God created man, he gave us the freedom to choose against him, to choose death.  But in his mercy he will forgive us and call us back, no matter our choice.

The will God gave us is very powerful: we make decisions that have major consequences for ourselves and those around us.  But God’s mercy is more powerful still: his mercy has dominion over even our own will.

Even if I will against God, even if I actually choose evil, I choose sin, I choose against him; God’s mercy covers this also and he can forgive it. Your will can cause great suffering to you and those around you — but God’s mercy will always reach you, no matter where your will has taken you.

This is very hard to understand, very hard to believe…

“True freedom comes only within God’s mercy.”

Outside of God’s mercy, freedom leads only to eternal death.

The “Make a Wish Run”

At the school, we are organizing groups of teachers, students and students’ parents to run for our school at the upcoming “Make a Wish Run.”   I took some time to reflect on this, and the more I did the less I wanted to be a part of it…

These kids don’t need “wishes” granted.

The kids are suffering. Like all of us, they need an answer to their suffering, something the world can’t provide them.  They don’t need to see Sidney Crosby, or go to Disneyland, or get a blue piano.  Because when all those things pass away and finish, the children will still be suffering — and they will still have no answer. These things will not give them any answer to their suffering.  Temporary pain or grief relief is no answer to suffering.

What’s more, they will die with their suffering and without an answer.  Perhaps “granting the wishes” will make the children happy for a time — only because they will forget about their struggle and their suffering — but their souls will not be at rest.  They will die and their souls will not be at rest.

We don’t need to waste precious time giving them things or feelings that will pass away.  We need to work immediately at giving them what will not; giving them the answer to their suffering.  Giving them Jesus.

Sex and birth control: we’ve done it, but have we truly given it thought?

What’s the logic behind all birth control: condoms, birth control pills, the “morning after” pill, and eventually abortion?

The logic is that we have to prevent an accident from happening in order to live our lives, do what we want to do and be happy.

When did a natural process, a child being born, become an “accident” to be prevented?

Why is it that we, humankind, must interfere with a natural process in order to be happy?

Alarm bells should be going off; red flags should be waving. If we are interfering with nature in order to be happy doing something we want to do, it is time we, as a race, collectively sit down and ask ourselves:

1. Why are we doing this if we need to interfere with its natural progression in order to get what we want?
2. What are the consequences of our interference?
3. Why not just let nature take its course? What is so wrong with that?
4. If not, then do we really want to do this?
5. Does it really make us happy?

Gay Pride community centres. Something is wrong.

I saw the community centre on Besserer St., the one flying the Gay Pride flag.  And I got a thought:

What is going on at this gay-friendly community centre?

The community centre flies the Gay Pride flag, to signify to a man, a woman: “If you’re gay, you are welcome here.  You will not be discriminated against or persecuted.”  This is a wonderful message for anyone!

But alarm bells should be sounding for any Christian.  Why does a community centre offer this to the man or woman, but the Church, today, does not?

Why are we, the hands and feet of Christ in the world, not offering this message of freedom and welcome to this man, this woman?

The community centre (the world) offers him something: community, acceptance.  Christ also does, in a far truer, deeper way.  We do not. Something has got to change.

The Church teaches this acceptance, this communion, this love; she always has.  But something is happening between the holy teachings of the Church, and what happens when you and I, members of the Body, get to implementing those teachings.  Something gets lost in translation.

This woman takes on the identity “lesbian,” because:

She feels she has no choice but to claim the characteristics of “lesbian,” because of her attraction to women (this is a prison and a lie).

Therefore, having claimed these characteristics the woman is shunned by a large part of society — many of them Christians.  And where does she find community; a community where she can be open and honest about herself?  She finds it in the lesbian community–NOT in the parishes, ministries and communities of the Church!  This is a grave crime of our human race…

We need to truly start being Christ, to whom anyone can open himself/herself up completely, in order to be healed and transformed and to find what we are all desperately longing for.  Otherwise this is what happens…

The challenge of fasting

The challenge of fasting isn’t the fasting itself; it’s what you do afterwards.

In all my experiences of fasting, I’ve discovered that it’s actually pretty easy.  Just don’t eat!  Yes, it’s an agony if you find yourself thinking of food, daydreaming about food or cooking (I don’t know about you, but I certainly thought about cooking and food more when I was fasting…)—especially near the end, where you’re often tempted to quit early, take shortcuts, etc.—and yes, it can sometimes be a great struggle to not wear your fasting on your face; to keep up your everyday way of life (as St. Paul warns…).  But I think the greater struggle is what happens afterwards.

Because I know for me, it took a whole lot of self-control not to attack my plate of food like a starved lion, letting on to people around me that I had been fasting and, of course, making a fool of myself.  Not to mention eating too fast and getting sick afterwards.  

I think a major goal behind fasting is to change the relationships we have with the things we fast from.  Fasting from food is the most conventional form, but for every thing we rely on in our daily lives, there is a way to fast from it.  And in fasting, hopefully, we learn to ask ourselves, “how dependent am I on this in my life?” “Should I be?” “Do I actually need this for life, real life, life in the Truth?” If after fasting I return to the same kind of dependence I had on this thing or habit before I fasted, was the fast not a failure?

The real challenge of a fast is to transform the way you think about that which you are fasting from; to develop a way of life where you are no longer dependent on this thing at all.  Take note of ascetics: one of their goals is a state of independence from everything earthly.  The important thing to remember is that this new way of thinking, this new way of life, has to continue just the same after the fast is ended.  

Asceticism, I think, shouldn’t be a practice of inviting suffering into one’s life (even if for good reasons).  I believe that asceticism is an accessible way of life for all of us, and that the main goal should be for the practice to enable one to participate fully in all aspects of human life (where possible); to enjoy them, embrace them, live them to the fullest; one should be able to embrace and enjoy whatever he/she fasted, but without dependence: in moderation, in peacefulness.

Because this is the only way, the highest Way, to fully appreciate the great many things we can enjoy in our lives(and even our sufferings): to experience them not to satisfy a need, to feed a desire, or even to bring a sought-after feeling of pleasure; not as  a means, but as an end in itself: as acts of full participation in human life.

Harvey Milk: classification, discrimination, ostracization and homosexuality

We live in a society where people are classified based on their characteristics: black, Canadian, Asian, homosexual.   Every person, in their minds, has preconceptions about every group, and so when you meet someone who has a main characteristic of members of a group, you a) classify the person as being a member of the group, and b) make assumptions about the person, those assumptions being the preconceptions you have about members of the group.  But at least some of those assumptions are false for almost all the people you “classify.” 

In the past, anything different from the “norm” was vilified in our society; considered inferior.  People having those characteristics were then, therefore, classified accordingly and considered inferior to the standard: female, black, homosexual, immigrant, of a visible minority, transgendered, dark-haired, brown-eyed, etc.

Today, as a backlash, the situation is reversing: nowadays, our mindset is changing as a culture, such that those things different from the norm are often celebrated—venerated—to the point that “mainstream” or the “norm” is considered inferior. However, there are some very prominent members of the society who continue to consider the non-norm classes as inferior, and therefore, we have learned as a society to fight for “non-norm supremacy.”  Martin Luther King, Harvey Milks, Gandhi and other visionaries fought for tolerance—first, of their respective groups, but eventually, in some cases, for the concept of tolerance for all society.  This battle has expanded to new frontiers, into non-norm supremacy.

But there is a terrible fundamental fallacy at play here: the fallacy of classification.

Whether in the past, when we as a society denigrated (I choose this word on purpose) peoples outside the norm; or today, when we fight lift up these peoples and place them on par with (or superior to) the norm: we have always made the fundamental mistake of classifying people in large, homogeneous groups based on certain characteristics they possess.  (And each of these people, each of us, learns to form our identity based on membership in this exclusive (it excludes everyone who does not possess the characteristic(s) the members possess) group—I will be discussing this another day…)

But I believe that if we do manage to change our cultural mindset from one of classification to one of acceptance of a common, unified and diverse humanity, many truths will emerge.  One great truth that, will emerge is that the “norm” is far different from anything we’ve ever taught ourselves.  The norm of humanity is something we all know and experience, and is something not dictated or controlled by one “group,” but is instead something we all are born into and live. 

I believe that every person has characteristics and qualities beyond their control; these they are born with.  This gives us, society, no right to classify them according to those characteristics.  The only norm is a norm that includes all these people with all the qualities that make them who they are. 

No one is outside the norm.

Harvey Milk and felt oppressed because the society he lived in (and he along with it) classified him(self) as “gay,” because of certain characteristics he possessed, and the society considered the group “gays” to be inferior to the norm.  As a result, Mr. Milk complied with this classification, along with many, many other people, and chose to fight for the class to no longer be considered inferior.

I believe that there is no class.  I believe that these types of class systems are flawed.

I believe that around the world, people who are oppressed because of traits they possess try to find people with similar traits, band together with them, and fight against their shared oppression. But does it make sense for those who are open and honest about themselves them to be ostracized, ghettoized and discriminated against, because of traits they may or may not possess, traits which may or may shared by some and not others? Because when this happens, the people cast aside will fall into the same mindtrap as their “discriminators”: they will ascribe that classification to their identity and be complicit in their own ostracization: they will ostracize themselves. 

Is this the world we want to live in? Do we believe we don’t have a choice? If you know me at all, it should be clear: I’m not an idealist; I’m a “hopeist.”  I live in hope.  Never say die. There is always an Answer.

 ——————–

This post was inspired by a show on CBC mentioning something about Harvey Milk; perhaps interviewing a longtime friend of his or something, I’m not sure.  I guess it doesn’t really matter: it brought him to mind for me, and this is the result.

Sometimes, “goth” is a breath of fresh air…

In our world, evil runs very deep.  Suffering is pervasive and affects all people, and we can see it everywhere, if we look deeply enough…but in our culture we are taught to hide it, ignore it, mask it an pretend it doesn’t exist, so sometimes, it can be very, very hard to see the suffering that is right before your eyes—even if you yourself are causing it.  Even if you yourself are suffering it.

Some people are blessed with a keen sense of that suffering.  It hits them dead-on; the wall or barriers that keep them from it are weak, and they do very little to hide it.  This is a great blessing.  But it is a very heavy cross to bear, because if you don’t know how to respond to it, all that evil will kill you…and so many among us, it does.

We like to make fun of goths.  I’ll take that back: I once made fun of goths.  I didn’t understand: why did they always have to look so sullen? Why the black clothes, the black (dark) makeup, the pentagrams and symbols of the occult, the blood fetish and other “disgusting” stuff (depending on who you talk to)?

“The goths” see the world the same way as I do; we all know of the world of darkness we live in and the evil that surrounds us, and every day we delve into its depths and face bleaker and bleaker reality.  If you face this darkness without any hope, it’ll start to wear on you: your habits, your clothes, your lifestyle will reflect that very same darkness.

This would lead most anyone to despair—and for so many in the goth culture, it has.  And this is a despair I’m getting to know well—but the Truth that saves us all, moments before despair can kill us, is that there is a hope.  And truly living our despair means living that hope – because where there is despair, there is always a hope.

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This post was inspired mainly by this website.  I don’t know whether it fits within the paradigm of “goth culture” at all, but it’s certainly interesting, if a little weak. The writer never seems to get to the heart of it…After more snooping around on the internet, I’ve learned that as it happens, I don’t have a clue yet about goth culture.  It seems even they aren’t facing the darkness they embrace so deeply.  But, as I mentioned, I have a lot to learn.