The Catholic Worker Insight
The greatest challenge of the day is: how to bring about a revolution of heart,
a revolution that has to start with each one of us. -- St. Dorothy Day
"The Catholic Worker Movement was founded in 1933 by the French peasant thinker Peter Maurin, and Dorothy Day, a former leftist journalist and novelist and a Catholic convert. On May Day that year, Dorothy Day and a few youthful supporters went into New York's Union Square and sold for a penny a copy the first edition of The Catholic Worker". (William D. Miller, A Harsh and Dreadful Love, Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker Movement)
The Mystical, the Personal, and the Beautiful
Try as I might, I have been unable to leave the Catholic Worker. A reader and student of the Catholic Worker for about ten years before beginning my own experiment of a CW House. For thirty years, a succession of "houses", two
soup kitchens, and a multitude of complimentary projects: and now about ten years away from the both the Worker and the Church (as if!), I am still as a small planet circling the sun of my life: the Catholic Worker. "Damn and Beatitude Blessing both".
Peter Maurin wrote one of his "Easy Essays" expounding upon his core philosophy: "Cult, Culture, and Cultivation". I have taken the catholic worker liberty of translating Maurin as "the Mystical, the Personal, and the Beautiful". Likely as not, both he and Dorothy would object. Objection noted, but set aside: not out of the arrogant perspective of "knowing better", but rather from that of loving the Worker so deeply that I must wrestle with my life and the shattering that is, as it were, a "necessity" if one is to accept the burden and liberation of identification as Catholic Worker...
I am so deeply Catholic that I can no longer be Catholic . (I absolutely insist upon the equality of women with men; a true and just accounting for the sex abuses of clergy and cover-ups by bishops; and, among other deeply held beliefs, insist upon equality for the LGBTQ community: the kingdom of heaven is within all of us!) I love the Church so much that I can no longer be Catholic: and nothing can come close to replacing it. "The Mystical" is, above all else, a living and breathing relationship: fragile as the tiniest of flowers, and yet as strong as the mightiest of winds or mountains: both, always at the very same time. The very idea of Jesus Christ, Yeshua bar Alaha, is the cohesion of the mystical, the personal, and the beautiful in a life lived on the margins, without the comfort of easy explanations or pre-determined definitions. It isn't so simple a thing as thinking that I know more or better than the Church. Rather, it is the simple proposition that the Beatitudes keep pointing to a differing Sun, rising in our turbulent sky...
My desk is a small table found and purchased in a River Falls second-hand store. We have become a family of "thrifters": a very "catholic worker" sort of thing... This desk sits behind a window that looks out into the small forest behind our house. Today, the tall tree branches sway vigorously in the spring winds. Beginning this paragraph, I ponder the delights of spring, along with the memories of a transforming faith...
My journey into the Catholic Church was by means of St. Francis of Assisi, Thomas Merton, and Dorothy Day. As a naive twenty-year-old, I was under the impression, as baptismal water poured over my head, that I was entering an "organic organization", a living thing, in which everyone would be schooled in the ways of sanctity. To become a saint, so far as I could see, was the only reason for becoming a Catholic, for being a Catholic. In short order I discovered otherwise...
I was a frequent speaker before groups of persons who, like me, had received or were receiving instructions in the Catholic faith. My enthusiasm for the Church complimented the priestly presentations. And as it happens to a few in every generation, I was starving for a mysterious "more"... which is precisely where the seeds of the Catholic Worker began to take root: the Sermon on the Mount actually means something quite dynamic! the Beatitudes are the recipe for a living bread! and the Eucharist is the diet for a rEvolutionary transformation!
About a year after founding our first Catholic Worker House, I was invited to a meeting with the Bishop of our Diocese. That dear man was eventually to become a close friend, but on this day, I felt intimidated. I remember sitting directly across from him, he with shiny bald head and looking very "bishopy". After introductions, his stare bore down on me as he said, "You didn't ask me for permission before starting your Catholic Worker"... Pausing, he added, "and that was good!" And so, we talked about my vision of serving the poor, social justice, and how it all linked with the Eucharist and the living faith of the Church. Dorothy Day would have been proud of me.
My studies continued with the Franciscans. St. Francis had founded three Orders, one for men, one for women, and another for both women and men who would not take formal vows, but instead, intently strive for a life of holiness "in the world". One day I had a luncheon meeting with a Friar, Father Brice Moran, near a Poor Clare monastery, at which we both liked to visit and pray. He and I hopped into my car and drove to a nearby cafe which he was fond of. As we got out of the car, he asked if he should lock the door. I said sure. He quickly responded with, "I never lock the doors of my car." I didn't comment, but I thought, "Of course not! If someone steals your car, the Order will buy you another one. No one will give me a car!"
The day in which I became a Franciscan is matched only by the day in which I handed out my first sandwiches to Preston at the beginning of our Catholic Worker. Both, though, are surpassed by the day of my first kiss with Michelle... The mystical, the personal, and the beautiful are not "normal". They are, though, the activation principles of Jesus' "the kingdom of heaven is within you!"
The Kingdom of Heaven is within you!
What would it mean to you if we were to simply drop the "g" from the word "kingdom"? What if we were to wake up tomorrow and all the world, everyone and everything, were our "kin"? What if we were "sister-brother" to all and everyone and everything? That, my friends, is the "rough and tumble" of Jesus' words: not some mamby-pamby-mumbo-jumbo: but an in your face, here it is!
Cult... the Mystical
"All things sacramentally exist in the sacred, and the sacred sacramentally exists in all things."
-- Hans Gustafson
Peter Maurin and Dorothy Day were revolutionary thinkers. "Cult" for Maurin was the great festival of prayer, liturgy, and sacramental life of the Church: now understood "mystically" as pan-sacramentalism: every moment, every encounter, and everything exists within a web of inter-connectiveness as One Reality: sacred in all of its potentials, and that exhibit the sacred in the personal by compassion and the correcting of relationships to encompass the vast fields of justice, equality, reverence, and peace-able-ness...
Praying the Liturgy of the Hours was a hallmark of Dorothy's life: whether saying Compline at Maryhouse or rolling along some highway, heading to a speaking engagement, in a Greyhound bus... the "Divine Office" provided a steady roadmap into the sublime Presence of God... I make regular use of "Benedictine Daily Prayer", Celtic Daily Prayer (from the Northumbria Community), Celtic Devotional (by Caitlin Matthews), and Whispers From Eternity (by Paramahansa Yogananda). The point being that we are never somehow separate from the Source, the Conscious Will to Love... Everything everywhere (everyone) is a vehicle of this sacramental Universe...
Culture... the Personal
According to Stanley Vishnewski, writing from the Catholic Worker Farm in 1976, "By Culture, Peter Maurin meant the study of literature and the great classics. The cultivation of the mind by the intimate knowledge of literature." (The Green Revolution, by Peter Maurin, published by the Chicago Catholic Worker). Of course, now that "cultivation of the mind", while still rooted in literature, extends far beyond the written word into all of the arts: music, dance, theater, movies, sculpture, pottery, and so on. All of the arts are, essentially, rooted in "tribal conversation": the oral / physical / psychic / and spiritual transmission of intelligence, connection, and coherence without which the individual person shrivels, and society diminishes.
Deeper yet, a core Catholic Worker insight, is that the person is the fulcrum upon whom history rests. One-by-one, we are all "it". The role of "society" then, is to arrange itself in such a way that every person has not merely the right, but the ready means, to reach her / his full development and thus move even further into "liberation": the fullness of their human possibilities. Only from this challenging perspective can we discover the depth of meaning in Jesus' outrageous and revolutionary manifesto: "I was hungry and you fed me!" As I used to tell my Board of Directors (who could never understand what I was about) as well as donors and volunteers, "The food is just to get people to come into the door. Then the real work begins: relationship and connection."
"Relationship and connection" is the primal energy of the Universe. Nothing can exist, somehow, outside or separate from, this energy / intelligence. Reflection (Catholic Worker Roundtables) and action (food, shelter, advocacy, resistance, communication) are, as it were, the daily praxis of the Catholic Worker insight. "That they may have life and have it to the full." (John 10:10) Praxis connects idea to practice to policy. Policy is us: moving together from a dearth of thought into the excitement of possibilities, day-by-day, realized.
Finally, "soup" is not really something that is "done" for people. Rather, "soup" (especially great soup) is always "done" with people. This "with" is all the difference in the world! There is neither development nor liberation for isolated individuals: remember, "relationship and connection is the primal energy of the Universe", so it is in relationship that we develop, and it is in connection that we walk, hand-in-hand, into the vast fields of our mutual liberation...
And so, I live surrounded, always by books. As a family, at least once a month, we make a family pilgrimage to a favorite bookstore. Right now, I am reading "Quantum Theology" by Diarmuid O'Murchu, "The Future of Wisdom" by Fr. Bruno Barnhart, "Mad Enchantment" (Claude Monet and the Painting of the Water Lilies) by Ross King, "Recollections of My Life as a Woman" by Diane di Prima, and "A Handmade Life" (In Search of Simplicity) by Wm.S. Coperthwaite. But then, likely as not, I'll pull a book of poetry off the shelf or maybe some science fiction and there I go, off in a different direction... In between, there are the daily chores like washing the dishes: cooking soup, scrubbing the toilet, walking the dogs, and sweeping the never-ending dog hair shed everywhere... and waiting, waiting, in pregnant anticipation for my family to come home from school: blessed indeed, in relationship and never-ending, always expanding, connection...
Cultivation... the Beautiful
Before writing, I simply sit and gaze out the window. Spring is here, trees are budding, and rain graces the day. In such splendor, it is easily fruitful to ponder "the beautiful"... A quote of Dorothy Day, which I have read many times, I read once more last night and again this morning. It goes like this: We need to feast on beauty to refresh ourselves and to remember Dostoyevsky's words, "The world will be saved by beauty". Truly, there is not a more perfect summary of the Catholic Worker insight than this!
And not because soup kitchens or shelters are beautiful! (Although, they certainly can be!)
"The world will be saved by beauty" is simply true. The "good" is beautiful. The kind and the compassionate are profoundly attractive. The arts! oh the arts! Why have we humans painted on cave walls and carved small figurines of the Sacred Woman: over 30,000 years ago? Why do we continue to paint, to make music, to dance, to tell stories, to design sacred space sometimes called homes? Why do we love to cook, to break bread, and to feast in families and with circles of friends? Why do we work so hard -- not just for money or even for pleasure -- if not because of our uniquely human hunger for relationship and for connection? We live, we play, we learn, we teach, we create, we ponder, we question, we seek, we sex, precisely because of the evolutionary drive for coherence: with the constant pull of some Mystery-Other.
This is why we will be saved by beauty.
Violence is ugly. War is ugly. Greed, exploitation, and oppression are ugly. Lying and manipulating are ugly. Endless-mindless consumption is ugly. Racism is ugly. Sexism is ugly. Destruction of earth, air, and waters are ugly. Patriarchy is ugly. Hate is ugly. Cruelty is ugly. All of the ways that either individual persons or groups or nations cause harm -- deliberately -- are ugly. Ugly will not (must not) be the last word of this precious blue planet!
Beautiful was the moment that Devin, our son, carried his bowl of soup over to the table at which homeless folks were eating their supper. He sat down with them. At four years of age, to do so was nothing special, because already he was free to choose. He could be without fear, he could be without prejudice, and he could be without Michelle and I sitting next to him! And beautiful was the way in which he was welcomed and regarded with wonder and awe: they were good enough!
Dorothy Day also said that the Catholic Worker was a school of love, along with, of course, being a revolutionary headquarters!
Dorothy always said that Dostoevsky's novel, "The Brothers Karamazov" was her favorite. Here's a quote from the book, from the chapter "The Russian Monk": "Love a man even in his sin, for that is the semblance of Divine Love and is the highest love on earth. Love all God's creation, the whole and every grain of sand in it. Love every leaf, every ray of God's light. Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you perceive it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an all-embracing love." And then, for me, there is "The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, also by Dostoevsky. This is the Holy Gospel for me...
Here's a little something from near the end of that story:
"I have seen the truth; I have seen and I know that people can be beautiful and happy without losing the ability to live on earth. I will not and cannot believe that evil is the normal condition of mankind... I have seen it, seen it, and the living image of it has filled my soul forever... But how establish paradise -- I don't know, because I do not know how to put it into words... Suppose that this paradise will never come to pass (that I understand), yet I shall go on preaching. And yet how simple it is: in one day, in one hour everything could be arranged at once! The main thing is to love others as oneself, that's the main thing, and that's everything; nothing else is needed -- you will find out at once how to arrange it all... If only everyone wants it, it can all be arranged at once..."
[Note: You know, it has been in the back of my mind all day, how Dostoevsky suffered, Tolstoy, Pasternak, and so many others: writers, artists, musicians, intellectuals, and oh my god the women, how the women too have suffered. And it dawned upon me, how very much the Russian mind / heart is conflicted by guilt and redemptive hope. Even today, this confliction is manifested in the terrible atrocities in the war in Ukraine. The Russian spirituality of Prayer of the Name (Lord Jesus have mercy upon me a sinner) almost "requires" that the Russian consciously and deliberately "sin" in order to truly pray... And so, Putin is sinning in public in horrific fashion... a brother harming a brother (and nation) precisely because he desperately needs to know that he can be forgiven: weird, yes... but only if we make the effort to understand "the spirituality of the broken heart", might we be able understand Russia, and to mutually move beyond always ready for war...]
The Mystical, the Personal, and the Beautiful, Again
"Into this world, this demented inn, in which there is absolutely no room for Him at all, Christ has come uninvited."
-- Thomas Merton
"Love is the responsibility of an I for a you."
-- Martin Buber
Back in the 1950's, during the poetry resurgence taking place in San Francisco, public gatherings, most often in small coffee houses, poets would read and celebrate their poems. Perhaps a jug of wine would be passed around and shared. Maybe jazz musicians would likewise assemble and free-form their music to the rhythms of the poets. Suddenly, poetry was no longer an intellectual discipline for the few, but instead, as Walt Whitman had imagined, it was the very blood, sinew, and bone of Americans "being alive". With the triumphant "Howl" of Allen Ginsburg, these poets were in the press: the mainstream found these street poets a curiosity. When asked for some sort of statement or definition of who they were, Jack Kerouac famously replied that they were "Beats": maybe "beat down" but always aiming for the "beatific vision". The press had little interest in any idea about a "beatific vision", so forevermore they were simply "Beat Poets".
America pretended to being "introduced" to "beat ideas": the blend of jazz and poetry, wild parties, sexual experimentation, Buddhist and Eastern spirituality, and mind-expanding drugs. But the Beats remained few, although with an influence well beyond their numbers. Kerouac wrote "On the Road" and "The Dharma Bums" both of which contributed to the radical ideas of the youth of the sixties and early seventies: and lurking in the background of it all was the subtle lure of some promised "beatific vision". War and civil conflicts could bear down upon but not stop the searching: where was it? What might it be? Ram Dass came back from India filled with stories of an old-man-fat-guru who simply loved without limits, could read minds, and sort of looked like the Hindu god Hanuman. Woodstock gave three days of peace and love, and some thought they were in reach of the "beatific vision"...
To say that I was among the "disaffected" would be putting it mildly. I believed then, as I believe still, that a complete "rEvolution" is required. There are absolutes which stand out for me: absolutely, we need a Constitutional Amendment affirming Equality for Women (but more, for Every Citizen). We need to completely eliminate the predatory capitalism of the patriarchy / oligarchy that dominates, exploits, and manipulates every institution of both the public and private sectors for the fulfillment of their demented desires for unlimited privileges, profits, and power. But most of all, we need to free our minds and hearts from the domination of "religion-for-profit". Instead of the Cult of Privilege, Profit, and Power, I propose as the hippies, beats, poets, and saints did before: we need nothing less than the Beatific Vision!
While not articulated clearly (whoever had time with food to serve and shelters to run) by the Catholic Worker, nevertheless the personalism of the Worker simply assumed the essential dignity, and in some sense, the divinity of the poor whom we served. This theological perception was clear: we have all been created "By Love, for Love, to become Love" (Simone Weil). In other words, regardless of our personal or our social systemic failings, every human comes into her life experience with a basic drive towards Union with the Absolute. Thus, the teachings of the One revered as the Christ, actually mean something!
Remember the above quotation from Hans Gustafson? "All things sacramentally exist in the sacred, and the sacred sacramentally exists in all things." What could this possibly mean but that the means of the Beatific Vision are here and now! Didn't Jesus pass this radical revelation on to us as his most essential teaching? "The kingdom of heaven is among you and within you!" We are all but one minute away from the divine milieu: wherever we are, the entire Universe is the kingdom, the temple of the Holy! We cannot escape! (Whew!) None of us are alone: we live, move, and have our very being within the theophany of God...
Fr. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin wrote, "Christ invests Himself organically with the very majesty of the Universe". Do you get it? Every part and particle of the Universe is divinized! Nothing is set aside or left out. This is why Dostoevsky could write (of course, he realized this while in prison), that in one hour everything could change if we would put down our guns and pull down our walls and love one another... When cooking soup and stirring it in our giant pots, I would often be lost in my breath as if in my prayer. It was the simplest of things. My breath included the breath of every hungry person in both dining room and day shelter, waiting with anticipation of the soup, yes, but also of my open hands in greeting and the hearty welcome of the home that we shared. With Teilhard, we can now assume the pregnant spirituality that affirms: "To adore now has come to mean pledging oneself body and soul to creative act, by associating oneself with it so as to bring the world to fulfillment by effort and research."
"I was hungry and you fed me", of course is meant to be taken literally. But more, it implies something to also "take mystically". The Sacred shines diaphanously through the whole world (Fr. George Maloney). The hungry are sacramentally agents of the Divine: which is a way of realizing the broader truth that the entire world and Universe is also sacramentally an agent of the Divine. The Catholic Worker insight is to live in such a way that we will awaken to the Beatific Vision: how else to accomplish this awakening but by the practice of the Beatitudes? Every moment, as everything, is interrelated, or one might say, "interlocked". Everything exists within the divine energy of coherence. As St. Paul intuited, "As for anyone who is in Christ, there is a new creation; the old creation has gone, and now the new one is here. It is all God's work."
As a poor man hungers and awaits his bowl of life-sustaining soup, we are supposed to hunger for the "Beat-Life" of the Beatific Vision boring upward within us... Our task is to put ourselves into the proximity of this awakening by the practice of the Works of Mercy, Peace, and Justice: not for a few, but for everyone, most especially for this entire precious blue planet... Redemption from the guilt of our broken and breaking hearts, from all the terrors, injustices, and harm of this world, is the turning of our hearts into the mystical, the personal, and the beautiful: to the Blessed Trinity present always as Love, Lover, and Loving...
Cultivating Sacred Delight and Holy Pleasure
Matthew Fox, perhaps the most important Christian theologian of recent decades, has made the case for a re-focus of the Christian Story: away from "original sin" and, instead, into "original blessing". If you've yet to read Fox, do yourself a favor and pick up three or four of his books! He can certainly speak for himself! His thought is the beginning point of a new Christianity, and this new Christianity just might be clear and compassionate enough to genuinely encounter the other world religions, and in a mutuality, serve the transformation of the world.
Isn't transformation the spiritual goal of all spiritual practice?
For millennia, Christianity has developed its core theologies with "original sin" in mind, and with a spiritual focus on penance. It wasn't until he was lying upon his deathbed that Francis apologized to his body for all the penance he had inflicted upon his body and for the suffering he had endured. He had, just days earlier, completed what has been described as "the first poem in the Italian language", the "Canticle of the Creatures". In this delightful poem, Francis celebrates the beauties of the earth and sky. One might even say that, finally, he could see clearly: delight was on his mind and in his heart.
Blessing is the Way of the Universe
Jesus' essential teaching was two-fold: one, the Beatitudes; and two, the ontological reality of "the kingdom of heaven is within you". Jesus, the Party-boy and Winemaker, divulged his life secret for any wishing to hear! Isn't it obvious? Penance is so much easier to cultivate than is delight! Now, wait a gosh-darn minute! What?
Selling guilt is much more profitable than delight! If one is delightful, extra money could very well be redistributed to the poor and not be put in the hands of a hungry Church institution! (Ouch) If tickets were needed for access to heaven (you know that old bug-a-boo "right belief), then the Ticketmaster had it made! But, if the kingdom of heaven was free, well, all hell would break loose, right?
Acting from within the limits of time, the Catholic Worker Insight took the path of least resistance and conformed to the rigors of voluntary penance: few persons could last a lifetime in such a demanding cause. Most "volunteers" work for a year, maybe a few more, and then leave to start their "real" life. Like the very poor, people just sort of come and go... It is only now, after my thirty years in a CW and ten years away, that I see something different. (Even Beethoven had to wait until he was nearly deaf to compose his greatest symphony, the 9th, the Ode to Joy.)
"Beatitude" means "blessing" which leans into "happy" and "welcome home!" It isn't an "attitude", but a brand-new way of living in the world. It is the very definition of "permaculture": "An innovative framework for creating regenerative ways of living; a practical method for developing ecologically harmonious, ethical, human-scale and productive systems that can be used by anyone, anywhere." It is the ancient Taoist concept of reverence for the natural generative flow of earth-universe. It is the deep wisdom of earth as an interdependent generative organism. Consciousness itself rises from within this sacred, generative, world. The "Wisdom Way" of both Jesus and the Taoist is the humble smile and bow before all that is a burgeoning-forth from this Sacred Source.
In its essence, beatitude is the slow, steady, cultivation of life from within the abiding kingdom of heaven: here, now, always...
The point of the "Catholic Worker Insight" is this philosophical nudge into removing the psychological / social barriers that prevent the conscious cultivation of a world of Sacred Delight and Holy Pleasure. Sure, the embedded reactionary forces of guilt and payment for redemption would work up a froth if reading this: but who cares? They are all intent upon the violation of every ethical norm in their fever to destroy the entire planet: why should we give them the time of our day?
Christians especially, but truly every spiritual practitioner, needs to re-invent what it means to practice "self-cultivation" to replace the burned-out idea of penance. There is already enough "penance" to go around! Did you know that it is estimated one out every twenty-five children (kindergartners) now in school won't live to see their fortieth birthday? This, as a result of the on-going epidemic of gun violence. So don't talk to me about the need for more penance! We need to change everything! Only if minds and hearts are transformed by happiness will we be worthy of the children we will slaughter.
(Excuse me but I need to recover from my own thinking...)
Creating a Recipe for a Sacred Life
"When all beneath heaven forgets Way / war horses are bred among the fertility altars." -- Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching
Similar to the "average" Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist, or Jew, Christians have a "belief system" that primarily serves to "breed war horses": with their diaphanous beginnings muddled in the general stomp. From the outside-looking-in, it is relatively easy to see a dirth of spiritual attention given to the arts of transformation. Both Jesus and Lao Tzu lived in times much like ours: oppression, exploitation, injustice, and violence: with women on the very edge of the margins. Rapacious men always seem to "know better" and are "skilled" at the games of privilege, profits, and power. Into this maelstrom, the sage appears, perhaps riding a donkey or maybe even an ox...
Most people, I think, operate on the assumption that consciousness is "manufactured" by the brain / mind, and that consciousness is even a "sort of thing": we are alive while we have "it", and we are dead when it disappears. The sage, on the other hand, has cultivated a different set of assumptions, beginning with "consciousness is the real reality" and the brain / mind serves as the "receptor" of That Which Is Universal and Always Present. Fundamentally, it is a matter of both choice and intention as to whether we engage with Way or get along with the crowd.
Cooking in a soup kitchen can set the stage, but it won't automatically "write the play"...
The kingdom of heaven is within you: the privileged and powerful always try to stomp on that most revolutionary idea / reality! The "kingdom" is always everywhere all at once: always within, through and through, everything: it is Universal Energy-Consciousness, Spirit-Holy... Wholly... Earthy-Good-Compassion Itself-Sexual-Delightful... Unborn / Born always Both and Neither... Unity so deep, so radical-to-the-root, that it can't be possessed, controlled, sold, manufactured, systematized, or otherwise "dated"... It matters not in the least as to "who" you are: (but It might just call you "Babe"!)
However, this is where the fun starts...
I might recommend that you pick up a copy of the "The Eternal Tao Te Ching" (translation by Benjamin Hoff. I might also recommend (I do, actually) that you read the Beatitudes in both Matthew's and Luke's Gospels (they differ, yet they don't). But instead, I am going to recommend Dan Buettner's book, "The Blue Zone Solution" (Eating and Living Like the World's Healthiest People). I cherish Jesus and Lao Tzu, Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, and St. Francis. But here, in this book, you actually get a "recipe" for placing yourself in the proximity of your possibilities for lasting happiness.
I'm going to offer a summary of the Blue Zone insights: (but first, I have to go walk the dogs and tag along for my own health and peace of mind)...
Okay. I'm back! My walking the dogs turned into a date with Michelle. We drove to Minneapolis and went to two of our favorite bookstores. Then, on our drive home, we stopped at a favorite Indian restaurant: yum-yum. And right there you've got the essential Blue Zone ingredients: walking, pleasurable conversation, good food, more good conversation, holding hands, moments of expressing gratitude, and the gentle kiss of our lover's hand...
The Blue Zones is a long, loving, look at those areas of the world inhabited by the longest-living people. It turns out that there are five places with the highest numbers of folks living to the ripe old age of one hundred or more years: Ikaria, Greece; Okinawa, Japan; Ogliastra Region, Sardina; Loma Linda, California; and, Nicoya Peninsula, Costa Rica. Researchers "teased out" the core factors evidently contributing to longevity, they include: 1) They move naturally and often; 2) They have a well-developed sense of purpose; 3) They "downshift" to shed acquired stress; 4) They stop eating when their bellies are 80% full; 5) They eat a diet with a definite "plant slant"; 6) They drink alcohol moderately; 7) They "tribe" with like-minded folks who encourage and support healthy behaviors; 8) They belong to some sort of faith-based community; and 9) They habitually put their families first.
Peter Maurin was fond of saying that we need to create a world in which it would be easier to be good: and he came up with a "program" which led to the Catholic Worker Movement. But what has always been lacking in the Catholic Worker is a similar "program" for the crowds of folks not inclined to join an intentional community or become life-long volunteers in a Soup Kitchen. Perhaps they too hunger for that mysterious "more" in their lives (especially when perusing the news of the day). Forming "blue zone circles" could be a beginning point. Family and community gardens that foster tranquility and beauty, as well as growing food, could also be another step...
Beginning to think in terms of "self-cultivation", rather than in terms of traditional "penitential" practices, could also become a valued touchstone for reflection and sustainable change. Braving the contentious divide of "right vs. left", deep spiritual values like nonviolence, simple living, contemplative prayer, reverence for nature and the natural, and the ideal of mutuality and equality could also stir the imaginations of rising communities. Findhorn Foundation in Scotland is an example of the blending of thought and intentional practice. William Coperthwaite in Maine has created a legacy of commitment to reverence as an eternal value. After all, isn't this what is specifically and especially lacking in both the United States and throughout the world? When every thought and every word is boiled down to a fine, clear broth, isn't reverence the missing ingredient in our lives?
What if, tomorrow and the day after and the day after that, we make reverence our one most essential building block in our personal program of transformation and then, step-by-step seek ways of demonstrating reverence in our families, neighborhoods, worksites, and communities? Which reminds me of one of my favorite stories... It seems that there was an old monastery with just a few very old monks, each waiting to die, as the only members. On a spring day, one year, an equally old Jewish Rabbi came for a visit. He and the Abbot, it seems, were old friends. After the meager meal they shared, the old Abbot asked the old Rabbi for a good word. The Rabbi paused and then explained a dream that he had had the night before. In the dream, and now even more so, he was certain that one of the barely alive monks was the long-awaited Messiah... with that, the Rabbi could say no more and left...
The Abbot gathered the other four remaining monks and told them what the old Rabbi had said, "One of us is the Messiah!" None of them could actually believe that... but, what if? And so, even though they each had been good, sincere, monks, they all changed. Everything began to be seen and understood in a brand-new light. Maybe Brother Michael was the Messiah? Maybe Brother Gabriel, he was always the first in the Chapel for morning prayer. And so it was for each of them. They began to revere one another; they began to do everything as if the Holy One was actually present... and pretty soon, nearby villagers heard stories about the holy men living in that old Monastery... They began to show up: they just couldn't get enough of the smiles and kindnesses of the monks... Pretty soon, again, young people began asking if they could stay awhile to learn the art and the secret of happiness... Pretty soon, for the last time, as the Monastery changed with reverence, so too did the village, and then the surrounding villages... and then...
Yes, indeed, Dostoevsky was right: it could all happen, soon enough, soon enough...
"We don't have to be spectators to our own lives." -- Blue Shirt Guy (FREE GUY)
Highly Recommended Reading:
Gandhi On Non-violence / Thomas Merton
Poustinia / Catherine de Hueck Doherty
Autobiography of a Yogi / Paramahansa Yogananda
Where the Wasteland Ends / Theodore Roszak
Loaves and Fishes / Dorothy Day
Peter Maurin / Marc H. Ellis
Creation Spirituality / Matthew Fox
Listening to the Heartbeats of God / J. Philip Newell
Sacred Pleasure / Riane Eisler
A Dwelling Place for Wisdom / Raimon Panikkare
The Wisdom Jesus / Cynthia Bourgeault
The Chalice & the Blade / Riane Eisler
The Cosmic Revelation / Bede Griffiths
The Rebirthing of God / J. Philip Newell
The Hope / Andrew Harvey
Merton & The Tao / Fons Vitae
Faces of Findhorn / Findhorn Community
A Handmade Life / Wm. S. Coperthwaite
Son of Man / Andrew Harvey
Be Love Now / Ram Dass
The Biology of Transcendence / Joseph Chilton Pearce
Occupy Spirituality / Adam Bucko and Matthew Fox
The Eternal Tao Te Ching / Benjamin Hoff
True Devotion to Mary / St. Louis Mary De Montfort
Robert Daniel Smith
River Falls, Wisconsin
2023 2024
Okay! I am an Episcopal Catholic!
a revolution that has to start with each one of us. -- St. Dorothy Day
"The Catholic Worker Movement was founded in 1933 by the French peasant thinker Peter Maurin, and Dorothy Day, a former leftist journalist and novelist and a Catholic convert. On May Day that year, Dorothy Day and a few youthful supporters went into New York's Union Square and sold for a penny a copy the first edition of The Catholic Worker". (William D. Miller, A Harsh and Dreadful Love, Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker Movement)
The Mystical, the Personal, and the Beautiful
Try as I might, I have been unable to leave the Catholic Worker. A reader and student of the Catholic Worker for about ten years before beginning my own experiment of a CW House. For thirty years, a succession of "houses", two
soup kitchens, and a multitude of complimentary projects: and now about ten years away from the both the Worker and the Church (as if!), I am still as a small planet circling the sun of my life: the Catholic Worker. "Damn and Beatitude Blessing both".
Peter Maurin wrote one of his "Easy Essays" expounding upon his core philosophy: "Cult, Culture, and Cultivation". I have taken the catholic worker liberty of translating Maurin as "the Mystical, the Personal, and the Beautiful". Likely as not, both he and Dorothy would object. Objection noted, but set aside: not out of the arrogant perspective of "knowing better", but rather from that of loving the Worker so deeply that I must wrestle with my life and the shattering that is, as it were, a "necessity" if one is to accept the burden and liberation of identification as Catholic Worker...
I am so deeply Catholic that I can no longer be Catholic . (I absolutely insist upon the equality of women with men; a true and just accounting for the sex abuses of clergy and cover-ups by bishops; and, among other deeply held beliefs, insist upon equality for the LGBTQ community: the kingdom of heaven is within all of us!) I love the Church so much that I can no longer be Catholic: and nothing can come close to replacing it. "The Mystical" is, above all else, a living and breathing relationship: fragile as the tiniest of flowers, and yet as strong as the mightiest of winds or mountains: both, always at the very same time. The very idea of Jesus Christ, Yeshua bar Alaha, is the cohesion of the mystical, the personal, and the beautiful in a life lived on the margins, without the comfort of easy explanations or pre-determined definitions. It isn't so simple a thing as thinking that I know more or better than the Church. Rather, it is the simple proposition that the Beatitudes keep pointing to a differing Sun, rising in our turbulent sky...
My desk is a small table found and purchased in a River Falls second-hand store. We have become a family of "thrifters": a very "catholic worker" sort of thing... This desk sits behind a window that looks out into the small forest behind our house. Today, the tall tree branches sway vigorously in the spring winds. Beginning this paragraph, I ponder the delights of spring, along with the memories of a transforming faith...
My journey into the Catholic Church was by means of St. Francis of Assisi, Thomas Merton, and Dorothy Day. As a naive twenty-year-old, I was under the impression, as baptismal water poured over my head, that I was entering an "organic organization", a living thing, in which everyone would be schooled in the ways of sanctity. To become a saint, so far as I could see, was the only reason for becoming a Catholic, for being a Catholic. In short order I discovered otherwise...
I was a frequent speaker before groups of persons who, like me, had received or were receiving instructions in the Catholic faith. My enthusiasm for the Church complimented the priestly presentations. And as it happens to a few in every generation, I was starving for a mysterious "more"... which is precisely where the seeds of the Catholic Worker began to take root: the Sermon on the Mount actually means something quite dynamic! the Beatitudes are the recipe for a living bread! and the Eucharist is the diet for a rEvolutionary transformation!
About a year after founding our first Catholic Worker House, I was invited to a meeting with the Bishop of our Diocese. That dear man was eventually to become a close friend, but on this day, I felt intimidated. I remember sitting directly across from him, he with shiny bald head and looking very "bishopy". After introductions, his stare bore down on me as he said, "You didn't ask me for permission before starting your Catholic Worker"... Pausing, he added, "and that was good!" And so, we talked about my vision of serving the poor, social justice, and how it all linked with the Eucharist and the living faith of the Church. Dorothy Day would have been proud of me.
My studies continued with the Franciscans. St. Francis had founded three Orders, one for men, one for women, and another for both women and men who would not take formal vows, but instead, intently strive for a life of holiness "in the world". One day I had a luncheon meeting with a Friar, Father Brice Moran, near a Poor Clare monastery, at which we both liked to visit and pray. He and I hopped into my car and drove to a nearby cafe which he was fond of. As we got out of the car, he asked if he should lock the door. I said sure. He quickly responded with, "I never lock the doors of my car." I didn't comment, but I thought, "Of course not! If someone steals your car, the Order will buy you another one. No one will give me a car!"
The day in which I became a Franciscan is matched only by the day in which I handed out my first sandwiches to Preston at the beginning of our Catholic Worker. Both, though, are surpassed by the day of my first kiss with Michelle... The mystical, the personal, and the beautiful are not "normal". They are, though, the activation principles of Jesus' "the kingdom of heaven is within you!"
The Kingdom of Heaven is within you!
What would it mean to you if we were to simply drop the "g" from the word "kingdom"? What if we were to wake up tomorrow and all the world, everyone and everything, were our "kin"? What if we were "sister-brother" to all and everyone and everything? That, my friends, is the "rough and tumble" of Jesus' words: not some mamby-pamby-mumbo-jumbo: but an in your face, here it is!
Cult... the Mystical
"All things sacramentally exist in the sacred, and the sacred sacramentally exists in all things."
-- Hans Gustafson
Peter Maurin and Dorothy Day were revolutionary thinkers. "Cult" for Maurin was the great festival of prayer, liturgy, and sacramental life of the Church: now understood "mystically" as pan-sacramentalism: every moment, every encounter, and everything exists within a web of inter-connectiveness as One Reality: sacred in all of its potentials, and that exhibit the sacred in the personal by compassion and the correcting of relationships to encompass the vast fields of justice, equality, reverence, and peace-able-ness...
Praying the Liturgy of the Hours was a hallmark of Dorothy's life: whether saying Compline at Maryhouse or rolling along some highway, heading to a speaking engagement, in a Greyhound bus... the "Divine Office" provided a steady roadmap into the sublime Presence of God... I make regular use of "Benedictine Daily Prayer", Celtic Daily Prayer (from the Northumbria Community), Celtic Devotional (by Caitlin Matthews), and Whispers From Eternity (by Paramahansa Yogananda). The point being that we are never somehow separate from the Source, the Conscious Will to Love... Everything everywhere (everyone) is a vehicle of this sacramental Universe...
Culture... the Personal
According to Stanley Vishnewski, writing from the Catholic Worker Farm in 1976, "By Culture, Peter Maurin meant the study of literature and the great classics. The cultivation of the mind by the intimate knowledge of literature." (The Green Revolution, by Peter Maurin, published by the Chicago Catholic Worker). Of course, now that "cultivation of the mind", while still rooted in literature, extends far beyond the written word into all of the arts: music, dance, theater, movies, sculpture, pottery, and so on. All of the arts are, essentially, rooted in "tribal conversation": the oral / physical / psychic / and spiritual transmission of intelligence, connection, and coherence without which the individual person shrivels, and society diminishes.
Deeper yet, a core Catholic Worker insight, is that the person is the fulcrum upon whom history rests. One-by-one, we are all "it". The role of "society" then, is to arrange itself in such a way that every person has not merely the right, but the ready means, to reach her / his full development and thus move even further into "liberation": the fullness of their human possibilities. Only from this challenging perspective can we discover the depth of meaning in Jesus' outrageous and revolutionary manifesto: "I was hungry and you fed me!" As I used to tell my Board of Directors (who could never understand what I was about) as well as donors and volunteers, "The food is just to get people to come into the door. Then the real work begins: relationship and connection."
"Relationship and connection" is the primal energy of the Universe. Nothing can exist, somehow, outside or separate from, this energy / intelligence. Reflection (Catholic Worker Roundtables) and action (food, shelter, advocacy, resistance, communication) are, as it were, the daily praxis of the Catholic Worker insight. "That they may have life and have it to the full." (John 10:10) Praxis connects idea to practice to policy. Policy is us: moving together from a dearth of thought into the excitement of possibilities, day-by-day, realized.
Finally, "soup" is not really something that is "done" for people. Rather, "soup" (especially great soup) is always "done" with people. This "with" is all the difference in the world! There is neither development nor liberation for isolated individuals: remember, "relationship and connection is the primal energy of the Universe", so it is in relationship that we develop, and it is in connection that we walk, hand-in-hand, into the vast fields of our mutual liberation...
And so, I live surrounded, always by books. As a family, at least once a month, we make a family pilgrimage to a favorite bookstore. Right now, I am reading "Quantum Theology" by Diarmuid O'Murchu, "The Future of Wisdom" by Fr. Bruno Barnhart, "Mad Enchantment" (Claude Monet and the Painting of the Water Lilies) by Ross King, "Recollections of My Life as a Woman" by Diane di Prima, and "A Handmade Life" (In Search of Simplicity) by Wm.S. Coperthwaite. But then, likely as not, I'll pull a book of poetry off the shelf or maybe some science fiction and there I go, off in a different direction... In between, there are the daily chores like washing the dishes: cooking soup, scrubbing the toilet, walking the dogs, and sweeping the never-ending dog hair shed everywhere... and waiting, waiting, in pregnant anticipation for my family to come home from school: blessed indeed, in relationship and never-ending, always expanding, connection...
Cultivation... the Beautiful
Before writing, I simply sit and gaze out the window. Spring is here, trees are budding, and rain graces the day. In such splendor, it is easily fruitful to ponder "the beautiful"... A quote of Dorothy Day, which I have read many times, I read once more last night and again this morning. It goes like this: We need to feast on beauty to refresh ourselves and to remember Dostoyevsky's words, "The world will be saved by beauty". Truly, there is not a more perfect summary of the Catholic Worker insight than this!
And not because soup kitchens or shelters are beautiful! (Although, they certainly can be!)
"The world will be saved by beauty" is simply true. The "good" is beautiful. The kind and the compassionate are profoundly attractive. The arts! oh the arts! Why have we humans painted on cave walls and carved small figurines of the Sacred Woman: over 30,000 years ago? Why do we continue to paint, to make music, to dance, to tell stories, to design sacred space sometimes called homes? Why do we love to cook, to break bread, and to feast in families and with circles of friends? Why do we work so hard -- not just for money or even for pleasure -- if not because of our uniquely human hunger for relationship and for connection? We live, we play, we learn, we teach, we create, we ponder, we question, we seek, we sex, precisely because of the evolutionary drive for coherence: with the constant pull of some Mystery-Other.
This is why we will be saved by beauty.
Violence is ugly. War is ugly. Greed, exploitation, and oppression are ugly. Lying and manipulating are ugly. Endless-mindless consumption is ugly. Racism is ugly. Sexism is ugly. Destruction of earth, air, and waters are ugly. Patriarchy is ugly. Hate is ugly. Cruelty is ugly. All of the ways that either individual persons or groups or nations cause harm -- deliberately -- are ugly. Ugly will not (must not) be the last word of this precious blue planet!
Beautiful was the moment that Devin, our son, carried his bowl of soup over to the table at which homeless folks were eating their supper. He sat down with them. At four years of age, to do so was nothing special, because already he was free to choose. He could be without fear, he could be without prejudice, and he could be without Michelle and I sitting next to him! And beautiful was the way in which he was welcomed and regarded with wonder and awe: they were good enough!
Dorothy Day also said that the Catholic Worker was a school of love, along with, of course, being a revolutionary headquarters!
Dorothy always said that Dostoevsky's novel, "The Brothers Karamazov" was her favorite. Here's a quote from the book, from the chapter "The Russian Monk": "Love a man even in his sin, for that is the semblance of Divine Love and is the highest love on earth. Love all God's creation, the whole and every grain of sand in it. Love every leaf, every ray of God's light. Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you perceive it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an all-embracing love." And then, for me, there is "The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, also by Dostoevsky. This is the Holy Gospel for me...
Here's a little something from near the end of that story:
"I have seen the truth; I have seen and I know that people can be beautiful and happy without losing the ability to live on earth. I will not and cannot believe that evil is the normal condition of mankind... I have seen it, seen it, and the living image of it has filled my soul forever... But how establish paradise -- I don't know, because I do not know how to put it into words... Suppose that this paradise will never come to pass (that I understand), yet I shall go on preaching. And yet how simple it is: in one day, in one hour everything could be arranged at once! The main thing is to love others as oneself, that's the main thing, and that's everything; nothing else is needed -- you will find out at once how to arrange it all... If only everyone wants it, it can all be arranged at once..."
[Note: You know, it has been in the back of my mind all day, how Dostoevsky suffered, Tolstoy, Pasternak, and so many others: writers, artists, musicians, intellectuals, and oh my god the women, how the women too have suffered. And it dawned upon me, how very much the Russian mind / heart is conflicted by guilt and redemptive hope. Even today, this confliction is manifested in the terrible atrocities in the war in Ukraine. The Russian spirituality of Prayer of the Name (Lord Jesus have mercy upon me a sinner) almost "requires" that the Russian consciously and deliberately "sin" in order to truly pray... And so, Putin is sinning in public in horrific fashion... a brother harming a brother (and nation) precisely because he desperately needs to know that he can be forgiven: weird, yes... but only if we make the effort to understand "the spirituality of the broken heart", might we be able understand Russia, and to mutually move beyond always ready for war...]
The Mystical, the Personal, and the Beautiful, Again
"Into this world, this demented inn, in which there is absolutely no room for Him at all, Christ has come uninvited."
-- Thomas Merton
"Love is the responsibility of an I for a you."
-- Martin Buber
Back in the 1950's, during the poetry resurgence taking place in San Francisco, public gatherings, most often in small coffee houses, poets would read and celebrate their poems. Perhaps a jug of wine would be passed around and shared. Maybe jazz musicians would likewise assemble and free-form their music to the rhythms of the poets. Suddenly, poetry was no longer an intellectual discipline for the few, but instead, as Walt Whitman had imagined, it was the very blood, sinew, and bone of Americans "being alive". With the triumphant "Howl" of Allen Ginsburg, these poets were in the press: the mainstream found these street poets a curiosity. When asked for some sort of statement or definition of who they were, Jack Kerouac famously replied that they were "Beats": maybe "beat down" but always aiming for the "beatific vision". The press had little interest in any idea about a "beatific vision", so forevermore they were simply "Beat Poets".
America pretended to being "introduced" to "beat ideas": the blend of jazz and poetry, wild parties, sexual experimentation, Buddhist and Eastern spirituality, and mind-expanding drugs. But the Beats remained few, although with an influence well beyond their numbers. Kerouac wrote "On the Road" and "The Dharma Bums" both of which contributed to the radical ideas of the youth of the sixties and early seventies: and lurking in the background of it all was the subtle lure of some promised "beatific vision". War and civil conflicts could bear down upon but not stop the searching: where was it? What might it be? Ram Dass came back from India filled with stories of an old-man-fat-guru who simply loved without limits, could read minds, and sort of looked like the Hindu god Hanuman. Woodstock gave three days of peace and love, and some thought they were in reach of the "beatific vision"...
To say that I was among the "disaffected" would be putting it mildly. I believed then, as I believe still, that a complete "rEvolution" is required. There are absolutes which stand out for me: absolutely, we need a Constitutional Amendment affirming Equality for Women (but more, for Every Citizen). We need to completely eliminate the predatory capitalism of the patriarchy / oligarchy that dominates, exploits, and manipulates every institution of both the public and private sectors for the fulfillment of their demented desires for unlimited privileges, profits, and power. But most of all, we need to free our minds and hearts from the domination of "religion-for-profit". Instead of the Cult of Privilege, Profit, and Power, I propose as the hippies, beats, poets, and saints did before: we need nothing less than the Beatific Vision!
While not articulated clearly (whoever had time with food to serve and shelters to run) by the Catholic Worker, nevertheless the personalism of the Worker simply assumed the essential dignity, and in some sense, the divinity of the poor whom we served. This theological perception was clear: we have all been created "By Love, for Love, to become Love" (Simone Weil). In other words, regardless of our personal or our social systemic failings, every human comes into her life experience with a basic drive towards Union with the Absolute. Thus, the teachings of the One revered as the Christ, actually mean something!
Remember the above quotation from Hans Gustafson? "All things sacramentally exist in the sacred, and the sacred sacramentally exists in all things." What could this possibly mean but that the means of the Beatific Vision are here and now! Didn't Jesus pass this radical revelation on to us as his most essential teaching? "The kingdom of heaven is among you and within you!" We are all but one minute away from the divine milieu: wherever we are, the entire Universe is the kingdom, the temple of the Holy! We cannot escape! (Whew!) None of us are alone: we live, move, and have our very being within the theophany of God...
Fr. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin wrote, "Christ invests Himself organically with the very majesty of the Universe". Do you get it? Every part and particle of the Universe is divinized! Nothing is set aside or left out. This is why Dostoevsky could write (of course, he realized this while in prison), that in one hour everything could change if we would put down our guns and pull down our walls and love one another... When cooking soup and stirring it in our giant pots, I would often be lost in my breath as if in my prayer. It was the simplest of things. My breath included the breath of every hungry person in both dining room and day shelter, waiting with anticipation of the soup, yes, but also of my open hands in greeting and the hearty welcome of the home that we shared. With Teilhard, we can now assume the pregnant spirituality that affirms: "To adore now has come to mean pledging oneself body and soul to creative act, by associating oneself with it so as to bring the world to fulfillment by effort and research."
"I was hungry and you fed me", of course is meant to be taken literally. But more, it implies something to also "take mystically". The Sacred shines diaphanously through the whole world (Fr. George Maloney). The hungry are sacramentally agents of the Divine: which is a way of realizing the broader truth that the entire world and Universe is also sacramentally an agent of the Divine. The Catholic Worker insight is to live in such a way that we will awaken to the Beatific Vision: how else to accomplish this awakening but by the practice of the Beatitudes? Every moment, as everything, is interrelated, or one might say, "interlocked". Everything exists within the divine energy of coherence. As St. Paul intuited, "As for anyone who is in Christ, there is a new creation; the old creation has gone, and now the new one is here. It is all God's work."
As a poor man hungers and awaits his bowl of life-sustaining soup, we are supposed to hunger for the "Beat-Life" of the Beatific Vision boring upward within us... Our task is to put ourselves into the proximity of this awakening by the practice of the Works of Mercy, Peace, and Justice: not for a few, but for everyone, most especially for this entire precious blue planet... Redemption from the guilt of our broken and breaking hearts, from all the terrors, injustices, and harm of this world, is the turning of our hearts into the mystical, the personal, and the beautiful: to the Blessed Trinity present always as Love, Lover, and Loving...
Cultivating Sacred Delight and Holy Pleasure
Matthew Fox, perhaps the most important Christian theologian of recent decades, has made the case for a re-focus of the Christian Story: away from "original sin" and, instead, into "original blessing". If you've yet to read Fox, do yourself a favor and pick up three or four of his books! He can certainly speak for himself! His thought is the beginning point of a new Christianity, and this new Christianity just might be clear and compassionate enough to genuinely encounter the other world religions, and in a mutuality, serve the transformation of the world.
Isn't transformation the spiritual goal of all spiritual practice?
For millennia, Christianity has developed its core theologies with "original sin" in mind, and with a spiritual focus on penance. It wasn't until he was lying upon his deathbed that Francis apologized to his body for all the penance he had inflicted upon his body and for the suffering he had endured. He had, just days earlier, completed what has been described as "the first poem in the Italian language", the "Canticle of the Creatures". In this delightful poem, Francis celebrates the beauties of the earth and sky. One might even say that, finally, he could see clearly: delight was on his mind and in his heart.
Blessing is the Way of the Universe
Jesus' essential teaching was two-fold: one, the Beatitudes; and two, the ontological reality of "the kingdom of heaven is within you". Jesus, the Party-boy and Winemaker, divulged his life secret for any wishing to hear! Isn't it obvious? Penance is so much easier to cultivate than is delight! Now, wait a gosh-darn minute! What?
Selling guilt is much more profitable than delight! If one is delightful, extra money could very well be redistributed to the poor and not be put in the hands of a hungry Church institution! (Ouch) If tickets were needed for access to heaven (you know that old bug-a-boo "right belief), then the Ticketmaster had it made! But, if the kingdom of heaven was free, well, all hell would break loose, right?
Acting from within the limits of time, the Catholic Worker Insight took the path of least resistance and conformed to the rigors of voluntary penance: few persons could last a lifetime in such a demanding cause. Most "volunteers" work for a year, maybe a few more, and then leave to start their "real" life. Like the very poor, people just sort of come and go... It is only now, after my thirty years in a CW and ten years away, that I see something different. (Even Beethoven had to wait until he was nearly deaf to compose his greatest symphony, the 9th, the Ode to Joy.)
"Beatitude" means "blessing" which leans into "happy" and "welcome home!" It isn't an "attitude", but a brand-new way of living in the world. It is the very definition of "permaculture": "An innovative framework for creating regenerative ways of living; a practical method for developing ecologically harmonious, ethical, human-scale and productive systems that can be used by anyone, anywhere." It is the ancient Taoist concept of reverence for the natural generative flow of earth-universe. It is the deep wisdom of earth as an interdependent generative organism. Consciousness itself rises from within this sacred, generative, world. The "Wisdom Way" of both Jesus and the Taoist is the humble smile and bow before all that is a burgeoning-forth from this Sacred Source.
In its essence, beatitude is the slow, steady, cultivation of life from within the abiding kingdom of heaven: here, now, always...
The point of the "Catholic Worker Insight" is this philosophical nudge into removing the psychological / social barriers that prevent the conscious cultivation of a world of Sacred Delight and Holy Pleasure. Sure, the embedded reactionary forces of guilt and payment for redemption would work up a froth if reading this: but who cares? They are all intent upon the violation of every ethical norm in their fever to destroy the entire planet: why should we give them the time of our day?
Christians especially, but truly every spiritual practitioner, needs to re-invent what it means to practice "self-cultivation" to replace the burned-out idea of penance. There is already enough "penance" to go around! Did you know that it is estimated one out every twenty-five children (kindergartners) now in school won't live to see their fortieth birthday? This, as a result of the on-going epidemic of gun violence. So don't talk to me about the need for more penance! We need to change everything! Only if minds and hearts are transformed by happiness will we be worthy of the children we will slaughter.
(Excuse me but I need to recover from my own thinking...)
Creating a Recipe for a Sacred Life
"When all beneath heaven forgets Way / war horses are bred among the fertility altars." -- Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching
Similar to the "average" Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist, or Jew, Christians have a "belief system" that primarily serves to "breed war horses": with their diaphanous beginnings muddled in the general stomp. From the outside-looking-in, it is relatively easy to see a dirth of spiritual attention given to the arts of transformation. Both Jesus and Lao Tzu lived in times much like ours: oppression, exploitation, injustice, and violence: with women on the very edge of the margins. Rapacious men always seem to "know better" and are "skilled" at the games of privilege, profits, and power. Into this maelstrom, the sage appears, perhaps riding a donkey or maybe even an ox...
Most people, I think, operate on the assumption that consciousness is "manufactured" by the brain / mind, and that consciousness is even a "sort of thing": we are alive while we have "it", and we are dead when it disappears. The sage, on the other hand, has cultivated a different set of assumptions, beginning with "consciousness is the real reality" and the brain / mind serves as the "receptor" of That Which Is Universal and Always Present. Fundamentally, it is a matter of both choice and intention as to whether we engage with Way or get along with the crowd.
Cooking in a soup kitchen can set the stage, but it won't automatically "write the play"...
The kingdom of heaven is within you: the privileged and powerful always try to stomp on that most revolutionary idea / reality! The "kingdom" is always everywhere all at once: always within, through and through, everything: it is Universal Energy-Consciousness, Spirit-Holy... Wholly... Earthy-Good-Compassion Itself-Sexual-Delightful... Unborn / Born always Both and Neither... Unity so deep, so radical-to-the-root, that it can't be possessed, controlled, sold, manufactured, systematized, or otherwise "dated"... It matters not in the least as to "who" you are: (but It might just call you "Babe"!)
However, this is where the fun starts...
I might recommend that you pick up a copy of the "The Eternal Tao Te Ching" (translation by Benjamin Hoff. I might also recommend (I do, actually) that you read the Beatitudes in both Matthew's and Luke's Gospels (they differ, yet they don't). But instead, I am going to recommend Dan Buettner's book, "The Blue Zone Solution" (Eating and Living Like the World's Healthiest People). I cherish Jesus and Lao Tzu, Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, and St. Francis. But here, in this book, you actually get a "recipe" for placing yourself in the proximity of your possibilities for lasting happiness.
I'm going to offer a summary of the Blue Zone insights: (but first, I have to go walk the dogs and tag along for my own health and peace of mind)...
Okay. I'm back! My walking the dogs turned into a date with Michelle. We drove to Minneapolis and went to two of our favorite bookstores. Then, on our drive home, we stopped at a favorite Indian restaurant: yum-yum. And right there you've got the essential Blue Zone ingredients: walking, pleasurable conversation, good food, more good conversation, holding hands, moments of expressing gratitude, and the gentle kiss of our lover's hand...
The Blue Zones is a long, loving, look at those areas of the world inhabited by the longest-living people. It turns out that there are five places with the highest numbers of folks living to the ripe old age of one hundred or more years: Ikaria, Greece; Okinawa, Japan; Ogliastra Region, Sardina; Loma Linda, California; and, Nicoya Peninsula, Costa Rica. Researchers "teased out" the core factors evidently contributing to longevity, they include: 1) They move naturally and often; 2) They have a well-developed sense of purpose; 3) They "downshift" to shed acquired stress; 4) They stop eating when their bellies are 80% full; 5) They eat a diet with a definite "plant slant"; 6) They drink alcohol moderately; 7) They "tribe" with like-minded folks who encourage and support healthy behaviors; 8) They belong to some sort of faith-based community; and 9) They habitually put their families first.
Peter Maurin was fond of saying that we need to create a world in which it would be easier to be good: and he came up with a "program" which led to the Catholic Worker Movement. But what has always been lacking in the Catholic Worker is a similar "program" for the crowds of folks not inclined to join an intentional community or become life-long volunteers in a Soup Kitchen. Perhaps they too hunger for that mysterious "more" in their lives (especially when perusing the news of the day). Forming "blue zone circles" could be a beginning point. Family and community gardens that foster tranquility and beauty, as well as growing food, could also be another step...
Beginning to think in terms of "self-cultivation", rather than in terms of traditional "penitential" practices, could also become a valued touchstone for reflection and sustainable change. Braving the contentious divide of "right vs. left", deep spiritual values like nonviolence, simple living, contemplative prayer, reverence for nature and the natural, and the ideal of mutuality and equality could also stir the imaginations of rising communities. Findhorn Foundation in Scotland is an example of the blending of thought and intentional practice. William Coperthwaite in Maine has created a legacy of commitment to reverence as an eternal value. After all, isn't this what is specifically and especially lacking in both the United States and throughout the world? When every thought and every word is boiled down to a fine, clear broth, isn't reverence the missing ingredient in our lives?
What if, tomorrow and the day after and the day after that, we make reverence our one most essential building block in our personal program of transformation and then, step-by-step seek ways of demonstrating reverence in our families, neighborhoods, worksites, and communities? Which reminds me of one of my favorite stories... It seems that there was an old monastery with just a few very old monks, each waiting to die, as the only members. On a spring day, one year, an equally old Jewish Rabbi came for a visit. He and the Abbot, it seems, were old friends. After the meager meal they shared, the old Abbot asked the old Rabbi for a good word. The Rabbi paused and then explained a dream that he had had the night before. In the dream, and now even more so, he was certain that one of the barely alive monks was the long-awaited Messiah... with that, the Rabbi could say no more and left...
The Abbot gathered the other four remaining monks and told them what the old Rabbi had said, "One of us is the Messiah!" None of them could actually believe that... but, what if? And so, even though they each had been good, sincere, monks, they all changed. Everything began to be seen and understood in a brand-new light. Maybe Brother Michael was the Messiah? Maybe Brother Gabriel, he was always the first in the Chapel for morning prayer. And so it was for each of them. They began to revere one another; they began to do everything as if the Holy One was actually present... and pretty soon, nearby villagers heard stories about the holy men living in that old Monastery... They began to show up: they just couldn't get enough of the smiles and kindnesses of the monks... Pretty soon, again, young people began asking if they could stay awhile to learn the art and the secret of happiness... Pretty soon, for the last time, as the Monastery changed with reverence, so too did the village, and then the surrounding villages... and then...
Yes, indeed, Dostoevsky was right: it could all happen, soon enough, soon enough...
"We don't have to be spectators to our own lives." -- Blue Shirt Guy (FREE GUY)
Highly Recommended Reading:
Gandhi On Non-violence / Thomas Merton
Poustinia / Catherine de Hueck Doherty
Autobiography of a Yogi / Paramahansa Yogananda
Where the Wasteland Ends / Theodore Roszak
Loaves and Fishes / Dorothy Day
Peter Maurin / Marc H. Ellis
Creation Spirituality / Matthew Fox
Listening to the Heartbeats of God / J. Philip Newell
Sacred Pleasure / Riane Eisler
A Dwelling Place for Wisdom / Raimon Panikkare
The Wisdom Jesus / Cynthia Bourgeault
The Chalice & the Blade / Riane Eisler
The Cosmic Revelation / Bede Griffiths
The Rebirthing of God / J. Philip Newell
The Hope / Andrew Harvey
Merton & The Tao / Fons Vitae
Faces of Findhorn / Findhorn Community
A Handmade Life / Wm. S. Coperthwaite
Son of Man / Andrew Harvey
Be Love Now / Ram Dass
The Biology of Transcendence / Joseph Chilton Pearce
Occupy Spirituality / Adam Bucko and Matthew Fox
The Eternal Tao Te Ching / Benjamin Hoff
True Devotion to Mary / St. Louis Mary De Montfort
Robert Daniel Smith
River Falls, Wisconsin
2023 2024
Okay! I am an Episcopal Catholic!