​This site is intended for everyone with a spiritual interest.  As I am heavily involved in Catholicism of late, it is laden with the wisdom of that tradition, but that still excludes no one.   In the book I am reading now, The Visions of the Children by Janice Connell, she quotes a conversation one of the children visionaries had with the Virgin Mary (my paraphrase):  Q: It is stressed in the New Testament that people may get to heaven only through Jesus; does that mean that all non-Christians are lost?  A: I am everyone’s mother, and Jesus died for everyone.  Other religions are valid, although some are better than others.  Jesus said: to those who have been given much, much will be demanded; to those with less, less will be demanded.”  In other words, one is judged by God by what one does with one’s circumstances.  If one is Christian, much more is expected. 
 
This attitude is both gracious, and, I admit, condescending, but that is not my point.  Rather, what I wish to state is that, even if one is not from a certain tradition, much can be learned from studying that tradition.  My tradition began with the Jews, and the genius found in their great foundational Bible is astounding – a genius that was extended, and Christians would say was completed, in the New Testament.   Here are two examples that I recently discovered from studying the final chapters in Mathew, which concerned the trial and execution of Jesus:
 
One: Barabbas.  Since the houses of the Jews were “passed over” during the killing plagues of Egypt, the Jews had a tradition that was honored by their Roman overlords in which a criminal was released – just as the Jews were released from Egypt – from jail and further punishment during Passover.  On the event of Jesus’s trial during the weekend of Passover, Pontius Pilot brought forth both Jesus and the murderer Barabbas, so that the Jewish crowd would pick one to be released.   Romans were a superstitious bunch, and since Pilot’s wife had had a disturbing dream in which she was warned to have nothing to do with this man Jesus, Pilot assumed that the crowd would free the innocent Jesus and have Barabbas go to the cross instead, and his hands would remain clean.  We know how that turned out. 
 
But here is the genius part – or at least part of it: Barabbas literally means “son of the father.”  Believers believe that Jesus was son of the Father, or God.  Barabbas was a murderer and guilty as hell; Jesus was as innocent as a lamb.  But the crowd chose Jesus to die, while Barabbas, the guilty one, was set free. 
 
Now, for Christians, the death of Jesus “released” humankind from sin, or bondage to the world of death and disease.  Jesus is the perfect one; we, like Barabbas, are the guilty ones.  Jesus is the son of God; we are the sons (and daughters) of an earthly father.  In other words, the trial mirrored the lesson of the entire New Testament, and the greatest point and reason for the Old Testament – that God would send a messiah to free humankind from sin and bring in a new kingdom.  The logic is perfect – the sinless must die for the sinner(s).  And the lesson is perfect: that we must ourselves die to the world, as did the Christ, to live again (to be released), and enter the kingdom of heaven. 
 
The analogies go on, but through this we can see that the tradition of the Bible has long been the template for our greatest literature, for the simple fact of its incredible depth as revealed by its nearly endless layers. 
 
Here’s another surprise I got from the final chapter in Jesus’s earthly life: with some of his last breaths, Jesus cried, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mat., 27: 46)  It is a phrase that almost everyone knows, and one that I thought I understood: that the man/god himself suffered doubts like everyone else.  But this is not true.  Instead, Jesus was quoting from Psalms 22:1 (2), which, in the end, leads to relief from suffering and brings joy.  The Jewish crowd watching him die at the time knew what he was referring to, and said, “He is calling Elijah!”, and anxiously waited to see what would happen next.  What happened next took a few days more, but in the end, we find that all was connected from start to finish, just as Barabbas was.
 
Just as everything in the Bible is connected; and just as everything in our lives is connected as well.
 
For those who believe in the God of the Book, there are no (divine) mistakes or random accidents in this life.  One has free will, and can diverge from God’s plan – a plan as masterful and connected as the Bible -  but even then, second, third, and “70 times 7” chances are afforded each of us.  It is such that when we decide to allow the will of God to enter our lives, everything shows itself in all connections, and in this, all the “mistakes,” as well as all the pain and misery and suffering, are finally seen as ways, or paths, intended to lead us to our own resurrection, to our own redemption for God’s kingdom.  This is the plan as written in the Bible, which is itself (again, if you believe) a literary reflection of God’s design. 
 
The wisdom of God, of the Word, and of our lives are then all connected.  We are all in the Book, metaphors of God’s design from top down, from Adam to Abraham to Jesus to all of us minions.  In this way, then, we understand how God can know every hair on our head, because we are all an integral part of everything, every detail masterfully placed.  Our existence, as well as our life stories, are displays of ultimate genius, a genius that even Einstein could envy, and did himself glimpse now and then through a glass darkly.        
 
 
 
 
 
  

​We had been this way before, to the side and behind our hotel by Apparition Hill, where the first vision of the Blessed Virgin in Medjugorje was seen by the children decades ago.  That time it had been to a place called Cenacola, a religious retreat for young men with serious addictions. There, a guy in his late twenties from New Jersey had told us of his decent into alcoholism, of his loss of job and driver’s license and girlfriend, of everything, which had sent him to this miracle town in Bosnia-Herzegovina.  What courage, and what humility it must have taken him to tell such a tale in front of strangers, I had thought, but how could all these young men do it?  No big city excitement, no girls, nothing for kicks except hard work and coffee.  Lots of coffee, I suspect.  It was pretty and peaceful amid the trees and foliage against the blessed hill, but how could that hold so many young men for months, even years?
 
This time, we were brought just short of that encampment to another, set in even greater verdant glory – a place of natural beauty.  It was a retreat for the Catholic religious, a place of quiet peace, set around a chapel of native stone and hand-worked stain glass.  It was to here that we were directed, and here that the director, a priest from Germany, lectured us briefly in a voice of incredible calm before he asked for questions.  I complied: “How might we continue this holy feeling of peace once we return home?”
 
His answer took nearly an hour, as he carved out the things we must do and thoughts we must have in his peaceful tone, making the answer seem so obvious after a while that I began to feel the fool.   Around us, statues of saints held out their hands or pointed to their martyred wounds as they basked in the rainbow of colors coming through the glass.   It was peace itself until some gnome materialized from out of nowhere, running up besides the pews.  “No, no, no!” cried the priest, shifting then to speak words in Italian that sent the gnome – what I then could see was an elderly woman in a dress and long scarf, scurrying back out through the door.  Returning our look to the priest, we could see that his peace had been upset. 
 
He apologized: “They come here to touch the statue of Jesus.  It was done by ------ (a sculpture who was apparently famous) and is made of (some material) that is very life-life but also fragile.  If I were to let everyone touch it, it would be destroyed.”
 
He did not need to apologize, as we had seen what millions of pilgrims could do, for even the rocks on the path up nearby Cross Mountain had been smoothed by the passage of so many feet.  But that Jesus – yes, I had already noticed it.  As the priest had talked and the light streamed down, I had seen that statue, set up on its cross on the floor rather than in the wall with the saints; I had seen it and shuddered.  Yes, it was realistic, the colors of the flesh slightly gray as if that person were about to die.  Worse still, the sculpture had put precise, human-like hairs into the naked legs of Jesus, hairs that shown as hairs will in the ethereal light.  It was that touch that had made it so real.  And it was that touch, I suspect, that had made it the target of that Italian woman, and probably thousands upon thousands of others.   
 
What is it about touch, about the article itself?  In this same village of Medjugorje, there is a bronze or bronze-like statue of Jesus at the end of the Stations of the Cross outside behind the church.  It is a wonderfully conceived statue, with Jesus slumped hard forward on the cross, with his shadow-like silhouette impressed into the very ground – also of bronze – behind him.  It is this “shadow” in Earth, of course, that reminds us of the impression his sacrifice made on the world today. 
 
But that is not what draws the pilgrims.  Instead, it is again his legs, or in this case, one leg.  From just below his knee, there are often, but not always, droplets of water that come forth.  Always there is a line waiting to soak up that water for miraculous cures, good luck, or simply for faith.  It is so important to the Italians that someone has made little cloths to buy that say (approximately), “This is the drop given to you from Jesus.”
 
I remember well the first night I went to see the statue with my son Jeff.  It was off-season, March, and there were only a few Italians at the base soaking up the drops with their special clothes.  With the night lights on it, and the Stations of the Cross lit up nearby, it was a magical scene.  Jeff and I just stood there waiting for the Italians to leave so that we might have a look, but soon one of the men waved me over.  From the Spanish I know, I understood him enough to hear, “come, see the drop.  Here, take this cloth, wipe it up.” He then did it himself and handed me the cloth, then gave me another to do it myself so that Jeff and I would each have one.  (Oddly, I did not know that this was a special cloth with writing on it because it was night.  Nearly a month later, my wife pulled it from a jacket she was about to wash and showed it to me.  Without the writing and the little design on it, it would have been thrown away.)
 
Magic.  The magic of touch is and has always been recognized throughout the world.  In the Gospels, there is the bleeding woman who touches the tassels of Jesus’s cloak to be healed, where Jesus feels “the power flow out of me.”  Yes, even Jesus admits to it, and the belief is there in us all, even if hidden by the practical man of common sense.  But is it good?  Is this belief good for the person of faith?  
 
Some Protestants would say no, and I understand this.  At some point, magic replaces faith, which the full-time priests at Medjugorje know all too well, so much so that they advise people to stop looking for “signs” and to start praying to Jesus.  But of course, it is signs that bring people to Medjugorje, or to Fatima, and, for that matter, to Machu Pichu or the Mayan pyramids.  It is not just about objects, but about the place, the reality of a substance, or an area itself.  It is about a cross, a substance, a place that is especially blessed, that has what the students of religion and magic call “manna,” after the Old Testament’s mana in Exodus.   The Hawaiians believed in manna to such an extent that to simply touch their chief without special preparation would kill one.  In the movie “Jeremiah Johnson,” the graveyard of the Indians had such manna that those who approached it, again without proper preparation and reverence, were condemned to death.
 
What is it, then, that is in both tribal and civilized (as in “of the city”) religions? 
 
We of most faiths know that the world was created by powerful sacred forces.  We of most faiths know that it is “manna” or supernatural force that sustains this creation at all times.  To the human mind, then, all of creation is a magical act itself.  Young children know this, but something alchemical happens as we grow older.  The magic of everyday people and objects fades into a bland normalcy that is the mark of the human race.  Some might call this mark original sin, but for whatever reason, the profanation of material reality is almost universally inevitable.  But some things come to stand out; some things are made special by “signs,” oddities or things and places that are associated with oddities that we often call supernatural, even though the natural is, in its miracle of existence, supernatural to our mundane way of thought. 
 
We have been cursed in a way, set under a blanket that hides the stars, but sometimes, a hole appears in the blanket; sometimes we or someone sees a star, or maybe the whole sky, through the blanket.  We know what they have seen; deep in our memories we recall this magical world, and Oh God do we want it again!  And then, there it is, made plain by an accident, or miracle, an oddity that shows us that world of wonder does indeed still exist.  And, if we are not too jaded, we take it to ourselves as if the world depended on it.   
 
Which it does.  Not the thing or the place, but the sense of magic that is the sign of the sacred.  Just like the young men in Cenacola, those who became addicted to drugs and alcohol, we are all looking for that magic, for the sacred, for the sense that fills a world made empty through our own device.  We take pills, we drink, we buy yachts, we travel to Bali to see them dance– and we travel to Medjugorje to touch the legs of Jesus.  Some ways to the sacred kill, but others remind us.  Better, some remind us so much that we are able to sacrifice the ordinary now and then – our food, our time, our pleasures – to find what is beyond the ordinary, which has become ordinary only through careless habit. 
 
In things we can go beyond things; in things we can find the sacred within and behind and beyond all things.   It is and always has been about approach and about attitude, from the Indian graveyard to the legs of Jesus.  If we do it right, we find the sacred in one thing or one place and through it, find the sacred in everything.  That is the meaning of sacred objects, of the tassels from Jesus’s robes; that is the meaning of Medjugorje, or of Jerusalem: to open the sky through a portal, through a hole that brings us back to the whole.  To make of one thing holy, then to make it all holy.  To, if we have our minds turned right, see the world as it was in the beginning, is now, and forever shall be. 
 
  
 
 
 
 

 
Friday night is date night, which for my wife and me usually means Netflix and microwave popcorn.  This weekend, the Force got us to watch two seemingly incompatible documentaries, one on a group of young Catholics who made the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage, and the other on the life of Baba Ram Das after his near-life ending stroke.  They seem incompatible, as one is a bunch of guys saying the rosary and wearing crosses, and the other, an old man contemplating the Hindu monkey god in his Hawaiian garden.  But within minutes after watching the former and starting the latter, it became startling clear that both the Catholics and Ram Das (aka Richard Alpert) not only sought the same things from life, but were promised them through their own religions.
 
The ends were the same: a merger or front-row seat with the Supreme Deity or Life Force to gain peace and eternal love.  The verbal myths varied, but the means, too, were often nearly the same: both carried beads to count prayers, both looked to deny the ego to open up to God, and both sought to find love within and spread it without through good deeds and charity.  Even the background of many of them were similar: Ram Das began his road to God when he got involved with Tim Leary at Harvard in the 1960’s with the LSD experiments, and many of the youth on the walk had flirted with drugs, alcohol and sex before realizing a need for something greater.
 
Or as Ram Das put it, something more permanent.  Said he (my paraphrase), “Drugs… got me into the womb of God – into Christ or Buddha consciousness – but only for a few seconds.  I needed more.”   In this, he understood that both Christ and Buddha were one in the same: human versions of God meant to bridge the gap for us, to give us an eternity “in the womb” rather than a few seconds.  Both the Catholics and Ram Das knew that the primary reason for life, and the only way to secure happiness, was in finding God and/or in having him (it, OM) at the center of one’s life. 
 
Certainly, the two documentaries, each without coordination with the other, struck the same primary themes, showing that the proven religions strive for essentially the same things through related means, although with different texts.
 
But there are important differences, even beyond texts, which are of style, or like different flavors in the same basic ice cream recipe.   The Christian emphasis is on human relationships, even intensely so.  Relationship is the essential ingredient of the concept of the trident God: the relationship of God the Father with God the Son as expressed through the Holy Spirit.  Sins are those that hurt this relationship, which are felt as wounds, just as people who are hurt have emotional wounds.  “We and God” is a macrocosm of “We and Other People;” we must feel sorrow for hurting God as we feel sorrow for hurting our wife or our children or are parents.   And if and when we get to heaven, we will meet the other souls there, to share paradise in perfect harmony – that is, in a perfect relationship of love. 
 
Because of this, Christian sin is racked with a personal sense of guilt.  But the Christian way to God is also known to us through worldly relationships, making God and Heaven very accessible.  We understand relationships.  It is through their perfection that we meet God.
 
Ram Das’s Maharaji/Hindu approach to Heaven is, at least to me, far more remote and mystical, even cold.  There is sin (karma), and sins against man, but the emphasis is on sin as attachment.  While avoiding karmic sin leads to the same thing as avoiding relational sin– one does not cheat another if he has no desire for worldly goods – the emphasis is on a type of consciousness rather than on relationships.   I’ll go back to the LSD experiments as a point.  LSD takes one on a cosmic tour of the universe, opening one up to the shocking revelation that we are much, much more than little people dressed in little suits making a living.  On a trip, one finds that we are cosmic voyageurs who happen to have stumbled temporarily onto this little backwater of reality.  Once past this shock, if the trip is a good one (and probably one of your first – they lead one astray after a while, becoming means to their own ends), one falls into the lap of God, or eternal love. 
 
The LSD trip is much more like the Hindu way than the Christian way.  The Christian way does not take one on cosmic trips – these are rarely if ever mentioned.  It is only known that God is all wise and can do anything, so that anything is possible, but its followers are seldom told to take off their basic reality suits and grow wings to fly about the cosmos.  In this, I personally prefer the Hindu way.  However, also like LSD, the Hindu mystical cosmic flights often become scary, even terrifying.  One often does not feel accompanied by a loving companion on these flights, but more like Major Tom as he hurtles out of control into a cold cosmos.  By contrast, in Christianity, belief means relationship with God and/or Mary and/or the angels.  One is never alone, but always in the lap of love. 
 
For me, the two documentaries were reflections of the two holy paths I have walked in life (let’s forget about the many unholy paths for now).  I felt the old longing for the Hindu/mystical, even as I understood the benefits of the intense and comforting relationships in Christianity.  In the end, Christianity is now my road because it was present at the formation of my cultural character, and so is not only the easiest, but easily the more authentic path for me.    But Ram Das made me recall that we live in an immense cosmos of many realities and possibilities, even apart from death – and even apart from heaven and hell after death.  Such knowledge may frighten, but it does add to the adventure.  And, regardless, it is a truth, as are the Christian relationships, of this existence whether we want them to be or not.
 
In the end, though, it is still about heaven, which is the eternal presence of God in our lives.  Whether we fly there on a magic carpet, or in the arms of Jesus, the goal has always been the same.  It is as real and as present here and now as it has ever been anywhere, forever.       
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
   

​“All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their property and possessions and divide them among all according to each one’s need.”  Acts, 2: 44-45
 
In the early days after the Crucifixion, the apostles were on an understandable high.  They had seen a man who they had witnessed dead alive again, with wounds and all to prove it was he; and they had been filled with the Holy Spirit on Pentecost, acquiring supernatural powers to heal, prophesy, and speak in all manner of foreign tongues.  Jesus had told them that he would one day come again “although only the Father knew the hour and the day,” to bring the world’s faithful into paradise.  Naturally, they had assumed it would be done shortly.  They were living in a state of ecstasy, where everything was possible.  The end was nigh, and they were about to ascend into heaven.  So what good were their goods?  What good was money, or even their lives?  With that attitude they were able to do astounding things, including starring down the lions at the games in Rome.   
 
When I was first studying Karl Marx, I had little Biblical knowledge, but I did know that the early Christians shared everything, and I did know that his phrase, “each according to one’s needs” had come from somewhere in the Bible.  Although Marxists vehemently hate the Bible, this fact was often used to shut up the more traditional realists who would say, “You can’t do that!  The lazy ones will just live off the others!”  “Ah-hah!” the Marxists would say, “check your own Bible!”  Somehow, in the pretzel logic of academia, that meant “case closed.” 
 
In retrospect, even though Marx hated the Bible, he must have read the New Testament, to capture the millennial fever that the Apostles had had.  He must have studied it and found that, to get people to overcome their sense of greed and ownership, they must have a paradise awaiting them, to make their past lives look small in comparison.   He must have learned from this that it is fervor, not socialistic science, which is necessary to keep people together.   This was later captured organically by the hippies who received their fervor from LSD.  With eternal paradise before one, all sacrifice is worth it.
 
We know what happened to the Christian communities.   The fervor was not shared equally by all, and Peter had to declare that all those who did not work, would not eat.  It must have become much more difficult in those communities when the Millennium did not come, so much so that to revive the communistic communities, it was necessary for St Benedict to develop his strict monastic code five centuries later in Monte Casino, including same-sex membership and celibacy.  As for the hippy communes, what happened to them was nothing short of farce.  When the immediate rush of ecstasy is gone, people have found, a commune can continue only when strict laws of conduct are enforced.
 
And only when all are in the community voluntarily.
 
It was that last bit that was taken for granted until Marx came up with his version of materialistic Christianity in the 1840’s.  It was then that he imagined that people lived in un-individuated blocks with labels like “proletariat” and “bourgeois” so that people could be treated as members of groups rather than as individuals.  This was essential to his science, and to his dream of a materialistic heaven on earth.  It could not be done through the individual consciousness, not on a national scale.  So, mathematician-like, the rules of human nature had to be changed to make the formula work; now, it was assumed that people in certain economic conditions not only thought alike, but thought almost exactly alike, and so could be treated as one.  One person is much easier to change than a slew of individuals, especially if “regrettable” but necessary force must be applied.  As Lenin once said, you have to break a few eggs – individuals – to make the collective omelet.
 
 No wonder that Marxists hate religion, and really hate Christianity.  It is not only because of competition of power, but also the different views they have on individuality.  For Christians, the individual is the one who goes to heaven or hell, and so it is the individual who is paramount; for Marxists, it is only the group that can have paradise, as the very notion of the individual invites selfish, capitalist behavior.  For them, the moral individual must be crushed and then merged with the supra-moral masses. 
 
Understanding this, late-19th century Rome was extremely concerned when Marxist communism began to take hold (if I remember correctly, first in Spain, known then as “syndicalism”).  As The Church always does, they spelled out the differences between Peter’s and St Benedict’s communes and the modern Marxist communes.  One of the first concerns addressed was the sharing of wealth.
 
In Acts, a wealthy man named Ananias is noted (chapter 5).   He and his wife sell all their goods and put part of the proceeds into the community, keeping the rest for themselves.  Dishonestly, however, they tell all that they have given everything to the community.  When Peter finds out, he curses Ananias, but not for not giving all to the group.  Says Peter (paraphrase) “Your goods are yours to give or keep as you please.  What your grave sin is, is that you have lied before God.”  With that Ananias, and later his wife, drop dead.  The lesson is not that one has to give all to the community, but rather to be honest before God. 
 
The Church likens the same.  It admonishes the wealthy to share their wealth, but only at their will.  It is through will that the soul of both the giver and receiver are strengthened through the voluntary humanity of the act.  In Marxist and socialist states, however, the giving is forced.  While the statist might see this as an ultimate social good, the Church understands that the soul is not strengthened by such laws.  As we know, in general under socialistic societies, the wealthy become angry (hear the Beatles’ song “Tax Man”) and the poor become entitled – and angry that they do not get more.  Under communism, the rich (except the rulers) disappear.  Without incentive, all (but the rulers, again) become poor, and no one becomes greater in soul – something that is not supposed to exist in materialistic philosophy anyway. 
 
Even from a social science perspective, we are so much poorer for the lack of a concept of soul.  The soul unites us with the cosmos.  Without, we can only expand ourselves through group identity.  Our soul then becomes the soul of the proletariat, or the soul of the Russians, or of brown people or of women, or of whatever group identity that is forced upon us.  This is thin gruel for people who might instead believe that they are one with the stars. 
 
Marx was right – we will not have paradise on earth until all fundamental natures are changed.  However, he thought that this could be done ‘en masse’ by giving the means of production to the masses.   All for him was external; there was, ultimately, no inner man, but only things and concepts of things.  Again, in his way, he was right: as the early Christians believed they had nothing to lose in the face of eternity and so shared everything, so the realized Marxist society would also have nothing to lose – not from hope, but because there would be no one left to lose anything.  All would belong to the Group Mind, with no soul wanting because there would be no soul left. 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 

​“Prayer and fasting will stop war.  It will change the material world.”  (from The Visions of the Children by Janice T. Connell, pg. 21) 
 
There it is again – this time, a quote through one of the visionaries said by the Virgin Mary: that we can not only change our perception and attitude of and about the world, but actually change the very nature of material reality. 
 
This blog is not specifically about Medjugorje, but that place is important in that natural law is bridged there again and again.  It just is, from giant crosses shining without sun or electricity to miraculous healings.  We can argue about it all we want, but is has been this way in this town since 1981 and continues to this day – but only here, not in the next town over the mountain.  It is a center of prayer and fasting.  How easily can we discard Our Lady’s comment?
 
What I find the essential question to be is: how MUCH can we change material reality?
 
For the past fifteen or so years, a guy who I considered to be old even at the beginning still comes around a few weekends a month to deliver his Jehovah’s Witness publication, “The Watchtower” and “Awake!” Although his uninvited visits always cause me to curse, once I settle down, I always have an interesting chat.  His son has come here a few times to hunt deer, and I have come to know certain aspects of his personal life pretty well. 
 
He was an iron worker and one time fell three stories onto concrete and broke his back.  He mostly healed, but of course that ended that career.  Since, he has had a real adventure with his heart, at one point clinically dying on the operating table.  It was then that he moved from standard Christian belief to the Jehovah’s Witnesses, because, as he said with a trace of anger, he did NOT see the light or go to heaven or see his relatives or anything of the sort.  All he experienced was blackness.  He does not want blackness; and the Witnesses promise a heaven HERE ON EARTH rather than in some spiritual realm.  This has satisfied him, for, in his mind, he did not miss out on heaven at his “death” because it will come to us only at the Second Coming, at the end of ordinary time on Earth. 
 
In the natural world, however, the big fish eat the little fish; here, humanity survives on consumption, and so, to a degree, is subject to the law of limited goods.  That means that some get eaten – or must remain poor – while others do the eating and/or get rich.  It is, by physical law, a dog-eat-dog world and it seems impossible that it could ever be anything but.  The lion lying down with the lamb?  How could that be?  Does the lion have to eat grass? 
 
But our Jehovah’s Witness believes that the Earth will be transformed when Christ comes again, with our bones raised from the dead into a paradise on Earth.  I do not wholly discount his idea, but do not wholly embrace it either.  However, if the physical laws of the world can change somewhat here and there – as in Medjugorje - why not a lot, and everywhere?  In the end, if the Creator is beyond creation, which “It” has to be, He could make any laws that He wishes, anytime, beyond time, back in time, whatever and whenever. 
 
We have all experienced this, this change of the laws of nature, in that bizarre phenomena called by Carl Jung “synchronicity.”  Here is a current example: I have recently been in a church group studying the Gospel of Mathew.  Because of the busy-ness of Easter, the last few chapters were left until later, so I finished them on my own.  My wife and I are now following the “5 stones of Medjugorje,” which includes reading at least some Bible each day.  Not wanting to delve into more of the  Gospels – rightly or wrongly, thinking of them as only remakes of the others – I followed them to their end and came to “The Acts of the Apostles,” the next book in the New Testament after the Gospels.  I had no idea that they were an account of the Apostles’ work after the death of Jesus written by Luke. 
 
At the same time that I began Acts, give or take a day, I saw the write-up in the paper about the movie titled “Paul.” I did not know until a greater write-up a week later – last week to be exact – that “Paul” was taken from Acts, which we find in the movie was written from the words of Paul by Luke as Paul was languishing in a Roman prison.  And so: having never read Acts before, and having never heard of or seen a movie about Luke and Paul, there they were suddenly, together, a one in a million shot at best.
 
I know no one is singing halleluiah from this little tale, but the truth is, when it comes to doing anything with the spiritual, these “coincidences” happen as a matter of course.  They are usually small, but consider: if you believe, as I do, that these little coincidences are providential, then two things must be admitted: one, that God can change the laws of cause and effect on a dime, at will; and that, two, I as an individual matter enough to the Eternal Power for IT to change the laws of nature (at least a little bit) for me.  And, as I am no greater than any other human on the planet, this means that the God of Eternity is concerned intimately with ALL of us – enough that God will change anything that is necessary for God’s purpose for us. 
 
I believe this happens whether we pray or are religious or not, but if one does and is, then one can see the miracle of daily life in one’s own life.  With that, one comes to believe more, and with that, I believe greater miracles come.  And with that, who knows how much the world can change?  Who knows whether the lion can truly lay down with the lamb? 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   

​A few posts ago, noted blog commentator Cal Roeker asked this writer if Medjugorje has affected me.  This is my reply:
 
At Medjugorje one usually goes to church at least once a day, which, oddly enough, is not burdensome there.  English mass is at 10 AM, and on this day we had just gotten out.  With a bladder the size of a pea, my son Jeff had taken the long walk to the bathroom, and so Vicki and I were left standing near the small chapel where this mass takes place, doing nothing until one of the priests who had just presided over the mass came strolling by with a middle-aged woman in tow.  Just as he was next to us, he stopped and exclaimed, “I forgot my cane (he was an old man, probably in his 80’s), and the woman with him – his niece, we were to find out – told him to wait there while she got it.  Well...I suppose I thought I should say something, because there seemed to be an awkward pause before the priest himself began the conversation.
 
“I must have been stopped here for a reason,” he said, as he reached into a small briefcase he was carrying.  “So, take a look at this picture.”  With that, he showed us a postcard-like fuzzy picture of the Virgin, up very close, which would explain the fuzziness.  “This picture was first taken by a friend of my niece.  She and some friends were having a birthday party for the Virgin and after some festivities, went outside to let out a large cluster of balloons tied together to look like the Rosary.  This friend then took a picture of the balloons from the second floor of the house, and handed the picture to my niece before even looking at it and this was the picture she got.”
 
We took notice, of course, as he was a priest.  He continued: “It is a healing picture.  Kiss the photo and pray for a healing and it will work for you.” (It has a website: www.tearofjoy.net). 
 
He then gave us two of the pictures – and then a third when Jeff arrived, one for reach of us.   He reached again into his briefcase: “Here, take this book.  It is short and to the point.” He then looked at Jeff suspiciously and asked, “Is he a good kid?”  I replied with a laugh that he was with us at church instead of on Spring Break in Florida or Mexico, but that only slightly mollified his suspicions.  Then his niece came, and he gave us a blessing by signing the cross on our foreheads.  As he turned to leave, he gave us his card, saying, “let me know what happens after you read the book.  It will bring a miracle for you.”  The name of the book was From Prison to Praise by Merlin Caruthers.
 
Several days later, it was time for us to leave.   We were desperately trying to get some sleep that night because we had to wake up at 2:30 AM for our bus ride to the airport in Split, but of course something woke me up early at 2 AM.  Because the room was overheated, we had left the window open, and now an odd singing was coming through from nearby Apparition Hill, the place where the Marian apparitions had first begun, and where Mirjana still had her visions to this day.  It was exceptionally eerie (Vicki, I was to find, also heard it, so it was not a solitary audio hallucination), and clear as a bell.  It was a chant that was also a song with a voice that was not trained, but one that hit each note with precision.  As it went on, I drifted a little into a light sleep, to be woken with these words (not exact, unfortunately.  They were beautiful in the original form): “It is hard for you now to believe me when I am here.  How much more difficult will it be for you when I am gone?”  I understood immediately – they were words that could have been spoken by Jesus before his crucifixion, or perhaps after, when he appeared to the Apostles as Risen, but to me, they meant Medjugorje.  That is, if I struggled at times believing in Jesus – and the miracle presence of Mary - here, where all believe and there are miracles every day, then how hard will it be for me back in the profane world? 
 
It will be – it is – hard.  It is thus also hard to understand how far Medjugorje has changed me, or other people who go there.  I do believe I had a metamorphosis while there, arriving both filled with hope and skepticism, and leaving with only a sense of grace.  It had taken (naturally) three days for my sense of “scam” to leave, as a subtle sense of wonder and miracle and belief settled in.  But the reader can see from this and the previous essays on Medjugorje that nearly everyone there believes.  As it is an isolated area, this belief quickly forms the spirit of the area, and anyone susceptible to human influence – and that is most of us - would feel the change in thought, and in possibilities.
 
A skeptical friend of mine put it this way, when I left the door a little bit ajar as to the depth of my belief: “It’s as if, if enough people believe, they change reality.”  That in itself is a miracle - that we can change reality by group thought - and I do believe that is true to an extent.  What is it that Jesus said?  That wherever two or more pray in my name, there I will be – and there you will be answered?  But that is not always the case, by a long shot.  The change in thought has to be total, beyond even rational thought, and in that, I believe that the change must be based on something that is “real” in that other realm that I call the spiritual.  The trick, then, is believing in both the spiritual realm, as well as in a legitimate representation from that realm.
 
Really, the latter part should be easy: after two thousand years, one would think that the spiritual athletes of the West (the saints) would have determined if Christianity and Catholicism were genuine or not – and they have long decided that they decidedly are.  But the former part, believing in the spiritual realm itself, should be easy as well. It is not really even a matter of “belief,” because evidence of a deeper reality is all about us and inescapable for anyone who thinks about it.  Therefore the two coming together in our minds should be easy.  The trouble is, many refuse to really think about this whole religious/spiritual thing.  It is too scary because it is not under our control.  There is also that whiff of sulfur that we get from Catholicism – that is, the notion that we pay a penalty for wrong thought and behavior.  Who wants that? 
 
For those who want to believe, then, the greatest obstacle is the group - think element.  This is a secular society.  I may go to church and read scripture and pray every day, but that will not be on the nightly news, nor what people are talking about at the supermarket or the gym.  And that is the real miracle of Medjugorje – not a vision from the Mother of God, but rather that the visions have brought so many together to believe that they DO believe – so much so that miracles can, and do, happen.  Our old priest knew; whoever or whatever was singing on the hill knew; and then I knew.  
 
But few here know, and soon, I fear, I will not either.  I will question, I will reformulate, I will speculate – in short, I will desecrate.  I will try not to.  But how much harder is it when “I am not here?” The one who speaks this is always here, of course, – the Bible tells us so.  But only in spirit.  Already these ideas are becoming so remote…perhaps they are only allegories, or worse, tales from a fantasy world made by and for a defeated people?
 
It has all become so easy to be normal again.  Yes, I have been changed by Medjugorje, my faith strengthened, my sense of awe and hope increased, but for how long?  Time will tell – not of the truth of Medjugorje, but of my own character.  And this world, this place apart from the land of miracles, is the test, as it always has been for me and for all of us.