Today, a new essay, "Magical Humor," in the Essay section of the website.  FK

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To write this title seems a blasphemy – why, Job lost everything and still knelt in adoration before God!  To which I reply, yes: St Paul turned back towards Rome to face certain death, and in Maccabees 2, seven brothers and their mother were put through excruciating torture unto death with nothing but praises of God on their lips.  But there’s a reason they’re in the Bible and the rest of us aren’t, disregarding historical dates: they were better, or stronger or however one might put it, than us.  For the rest of us, when horrible things happen, from business losses to a cancer diagnosis to the death of a child, we either ask, “why me?,” or hunker down and curse God, or both.  As my now-deceased friend Bill was fond of saying, “Life sucks and then you die.”  We did not ask to be born, and we most certainly didn’t ask to be put through hell on earth.  Why shouldn’t we resent God?
 
The title to this essay was borrowed from the book, Resenting God: Escape the Downward Spiral of Blame, by John Snyder, a minister who well knew suffering and futility, having lost his ability to focus his eyes just as he was beginning his PhD work in theology.  In his book, Snyder comes to a critical point about half-way through when he tells us bluntly that life is not all about us.  We are, rather, bit players in a drama that spans all time which will be fitted together perfectly in the end, all for the glory of God.  But we are not merely cogs in a cold and impartial machine.  Importantly, perfection is the key to God, and perfection is perfect beauty and perfect love.  Therefore, our bit part plays into this perfection.  If we wish to approach life in faith, then all the better, for we will realize our part in love and perfection.  If not, we will still be fitted into this perfection, but we will not recognize it.  In not recognizing it, life will seem meaningless, at best, and cruel and terrible at worst.  In not recognizing that it is all about God and his plan, we will think that life sucks.  And when bad things happen, as they will sooner or later, we will be resentful as hell.
 
As to God’s plan, Snyder invites us to review our life to see if we can identify times in which unexplainable things happened for our need or benefit, either at that time or for the future.  If I might plug my second published book, Beneath the Turning Stars, that is precisely what my set of essays are about: the times in which ordinary life gave me miracles, or showed me its wondrous depth.   When I began writing these essays for this website, I didn’t realize what was happening until several had been already written.  In a kind of miracle of its own, I saw that some divine hand had shaped some of the more important aspects of my life.  Even in defeat, I could see that those low times led to better times – not necessarily in terms of practical matters, but in terms of faith.  And, gradually, it became apparent that faith is the most valuable asset any of us could have.  It is to realize that one is part of the plan – a small part, but no matter, for God’s plan is far greater than any plan any mortal could concoct.  To realize that one belongs in this plan is to realize something greater, in fact, than anything we could imagine. 
 
Snyder sites a fascinating fact about the Golden Gate Bridge and the attempted suicides there.   Quote: “…more than 1200 desperate people have jumped from San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge since it first opened in 1937… In detailed studies done on those who somehow managed to survive the four second, 220 foot droop to the Bay, the survivors tell strikingly similar stories.  The common account is that immediately after the leap off the side of the bridge, something very strange and unexpected happens.  Those who just a  moment earlier couldn’t think of a single reason to live or who couldn’t imagine any possible way out of their plight, suddenly as if  by some magic, realize a whole series of good and happy resolutions to their problems.  But in their earlier, muddled misperceptions of reality and resentments of all kinds, all these answers had entirely escaped them.  In the first few second of their free fall, they can see no way out.  But then time seems to slow down and a high-speed tape begins to play in their minds. By the time they reach the last thirty feet above the cold water, they can clearly see a solution to every problem they face, except one – the fact that they just jumped off the Golden State Bridge.  Those who lived to tell about it reported that their last thought before hitting the water was, “I wish I hadn’t done it!”  Tragically, for the vast majority who made the leap, this final revelation would have come too late.
 
“We are here for reasons far exceeding our own.”
 
We must have faith, of course, but it is not always blind faith.  Those people who jumped actually saw how they could fit perfectly into the world, making of their lives something whole and meaningful.   Going over our past also grants us this view.  And finally, simple common-sense thinking should tell us, if we are not too caught up in our own distorted vision of things, that a universe of beauty and natural laws does not just happen.  There is then every reason to believe that we, too, fit into all of this in a beautiful and harmonious way by the will of something that is the very template of beauty and harmony.
 
I am not forgetting the horrible things that do happen to us, mostly by other people whose distortions are dark and harmful, but also by nature.  As Snyder tells us, God’s time is not our time; things will most certainly work out, as God always makes perfect that which is chaotic or evil, but we may never see it in our short life span.  There is one thing that I am certain of, however – that just as the people saw how the hopelessness of their lives could clear up perfectly just before they hit the water, so will we, or at least the vast majority of us, see the deep cohesion of our existence just before our end.  This is what those with long experience at hospice say, and this is what those who have narrowly escaped death say. In this, they also confirm that life is unspeakably beautiful and meaningful, and that it is a privilege to live, even in difficult or painful circumstances.  
 
This is why, from what I have learned, we can say that Faith is our most valuable asset.  Unless we are blessed with a super-human or prophetic vision, we will not always understand the ultimate perfection of existence.  Life, at times, will most certainly suck, but with faith, we will understand that it doesn’t, not really, not in the end.  We might also be encouraged by the empirical evidence that we will understand all of this as the door to our own death opens. 
 
In saying this, I hope I am not tempting fate, or faith, for I want nothing but happiness and joy all my life.  But we cannot help but see reality about us, and, with a little more effort, the beginning of the truth behind the reality.  Yes, life sucks at times, but not forever. The pain at the dentist ends with fixed teeth, and the appendectomy cures us.  And sometimes, after it is all over, we get to have ice cream.   
                              
 
 
 
 
 

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That this website is called The Quiet Voice is a mild joke (or more) to most who know me.  I live by words.  I talk about everything almost all the time, and when I am not talking I am writing.  In writing, I am way more serious, as the printed word reaches much deeper than chatter, but still, here I am, smacking down words often to things that defy words.  This is not really an oxymoron, though, as at least words have identified for me an obstacle to my own wisdom, although this is done by words.  And in the end, even the quiet man – who is usually not me – does need words.  They anchor thoughts and allow them greater depth, even if they might also hinder wisdom at times.  We need, most of us, both words and quiet reflection.
 
So it is that when I am doing things alone that require physical labor, be it cooking or fixing a fence or repeating scales on the guitar, I like to keep words rolling in the background.  I do this with talk radio, as TV demands too much from the senses (vision) and is not nearly as portable.  Talk radio, however, has become too painful to hear.  It is not the side it takes that bothers me, which is usually to the right, although NPR has its left-ish say, but rather the frantic tone it has taken of late.  As if we in America were dying of hunger, or smothering each other with plastic bag or hacking each other apart with machetes by the hundreds of thousands. 
 
I have found new friends, however, in Christian radio stations, both of the evangelical and the Catholic variety.  Their programming brings not only new meaning to scripture, which would not be of universal interest, but also news and testimonials to what has happened and is happening in the world on a very personal level.  They have their own biases, of course, but they are not clouded by vitriol.  They truly desire what is best for the world, as the experiences rendered to us by their members in faith attest to so graphically.
 
This morning, while trying to memorize a dozen or more Christmas songs on guitar, I heard two testimonials to history and faith that were particularly moving.  Each involved an atrocity of astounding proportions.   
 
Cambodia.  If you ever have the chance to see the movie “The Killing Fields,” don’t – unless you have a very strong emotional stomach.  It shows what the Marxist murderer Pol Pot did to his fellow Cambodians after the US left Vietnam in the 70’s.  Many are aware that he killed 2 million Cambodians, a third of the population, to make way for his paradise on earth.  Gratefully, he was so extreme that even the Marxist government of Vietnam could not handle him, and helped send him back to a hidden jungle retreat where he died ignominiously.  Most, though - at least me - never thought of the scared and scarred people he left behind to live. 
 
Enter our speaker.  He was a child when he was able to fly off with the US military as Pol Pot was killing his way (often by suffocation with plastic bags) through the capital city of Phnom Penh, leaving his mother (and his dead father) behind.  He was adopted by a Protestant couple in Minnesota, where he remained happy and safe until his upbringing called to him to evangelize.  He still spoke Cambodian, and Cambodia was a non-Christian mess of wreckage and poverty, so off he went.  He realized his mistake the moment he stepped off the plane onto the bleak tarmac and into the tropical heat.  The memories came back and all he wanted to do was run back to Minnesota. 
 
Those on the his team there – I believe they were Cambodian converts although I did not hear that on the show  - quickly set out to help him find his birth mother, although he admitted to not being too keen on any of his past.  They found her and left him with her as she spent hours telling him of her torture by the Pol Pot regime, showing him her many scars.  This made him want to leave all the more, but this was minor compared to what was to come next.  Back at the mission, people dropped off their starving small children by the score, until they could handle no more.   So it was when a desperate mother came to him with a bundle of filthy rags.  He knew what was in them, and told her they could not take the child.  Then she unwrapped the bundle, showing a baby of two weeks so weak from hunger that he could not open his eyes.  She prostrated herself before him and, crying, wrapped her arms around his legs and kissed his feet.  Of course he could not refuse. 
 
They tried to save the child but it was too late, which brought the missionary to real tears.  Because they were “believers,” they were not allowed to bury the body in the Buddhist temple, and so had to plead for a tiny bit of land nearby to bury him.  At the moment when he was to read a passage from the Bible over the grave, loudspeakers next to him blurted out a litany from the temple that blocked his attempt.  He felt broken at that moment, but then gained the strength to continue as he realized that this was precisely what other missionaries had once faced world – wide.  He then understood his mission, both of physical and spiritual compassion, and has continued there to this day. 
 
Meanwhile, the brief news at the top of the hour told me that they continued to bicker over the votes in Broward County, Florida.
 
The next story was told by a priest with an African accent of his work in Rwanda.   I did not hear if he had been there during the atrocities.  Rwanda is populated primarily by two large tribes, the Hutus and the Tutsis (or Watutsis for those who remember them from early sixties.  I believe a dance was named after them), who have hated each other for generations.  In the early 90’s, the Hutus killed off hundreds of thousands of their Tutsi neighbors with machetes and other common household instruments.  The Tutsis then struck back, and in all, nearly one million people, almost all civilians including children and babies, were killed.  The priest talked of one man whose neighbor was one of those who helped to slaughter his side.  When asked how he could live beside him, the man said that they had to learn to live together.  There was no other way except more killing, and that, he hoped, was finished.
 
Rwanda is the site of a very active Marian shrine, in which she appeared a decade before the slaughter.  Now, Rwanda is one of the safest countries in Africa, and is growing a large tourist industry.  The people have killed in astounding numbers but now appear to be done with it.   After all, for many there seems to be no other way.
 
There is a subtlety in these stories that attracted me but remained elusive.  Yes, it is clear that we are all capable of such things, as we can see from Nazi Germany to Serbia to Cambodia to Rwanda, and even to the halls of Montezuma (the Aztecs).  But we glide, thinking that we are too far from that.  This might seem like simple willed blindness or false complacency, which is something we all understand, but it is much more than that, and here is where we hit the hard part: in not realizing the depth of our potential depravity, we also do not realize our potential to reach the heavens as beacons of light.  In living in the uneventful middle, we as a people forget the infinite height and depth of the universe and those of us in it.  In living as we now do, we rarely grasp what we were born to grasp as Homo sapiens, literally, “the only species that thinks.”
 
I was helped in my understanding of this immeasurably by an exorcist just yesterday morning.  As I sat to write, a message came unbidden from our church priest to me and to others with an hour-long video of another priest who is an exorcist, giving a sermon on his dealings with demons.  Father Ripperger, the exorcist, was a friend of our local priest from their days in the seminary, and somehow the timing from one to the other to me – and perhaps to others – was supernaturally perfect.  I have only listened to the first 6 plus minutes of the sermon so far but here is what he said in these short minutes (with some of my paraphrasing):
 
“Perfection comes through diabolical intervention, which becomes an instrument for our sanctification.  This is true of the whole of spiritual life.   Those who have only venial (mild) sins become complacent, but in the realm of the spiritual, as in most of life, one is either going up or going down.  Demonic interference within us or in our lives forces us to fight, to become active, and so to become stronger.
 
“It is exactly where our weakness(es) is that the demon will strike.  This is where we need extra strength - which we receive from our increased need, and therefore desire, of faith.  This is meant to send us in the direction of greater perfection.” 
 
This makes me think again of that poor evangelical in Cambodia whose weakness, understandably, was to forget the horrors of his past.  Yet fate and his quiet willingness sent him exactly into the lion’s den.  As he was plunged deeper into its horrors, he wished to run away, but his heart was caught by the tears of a mother with her dying child.  As the megaphones blasted away during the solemnity of the burial, he sunk to such a depth of horror that the responding light was all the more brilliant.  He had to go to the depths – to be tested by the worst demons of destruction and death and cruelty, even unto his mother – to realize the depth, or height, of grace within himself.   This brought him to see, that is, what infinite good God had wrought in his creation through the contrast given by evil.  If not, he would have remained unresolved in his wounds, hiding in the safe suburbs of Minneapolis while his past ground slowly away at his superficial happiness. 
 
It is the only way, this way (as Christians say) of the Cross.  Without our testing, we fall away never realizing our humanity; without our testing, faith is superficial and grace an afterthought.  Without that tension, we remain flaccid, bored, and easy prey for the demons of profane mediocrity.  No test is valid where we are guaranteed to pass.  Life is not only a struggle in the jungle for physical survival, but also a spiritual struggle to rise above the jungle.  It is only through this spiritual struggle that most of us can realize the wonder of our being, of our image in the likeness of God.   

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Because we are reading The Acts of the Apostles in Bible class, I have become fascinated with the descent of the Holy Spirit as it was described by Luke (Chapter 2).  Here, as mentioned a few blogs ago, a ‘force came as the wind and settled on their heads like tongues of flames and gave them special’ – we might say magical – powers, so much so that a famous magician of the time, Simon Magus, tried to buy these “tricks”  from them (Chapter 8).  They were obviously not tricks and not for sale, but the abilities were pretty neat, and who hasn’t wished for some super or magical power at some time in their lives?  We have to remember, though, that all but one Apostle, John, was killed as a martyr, and John himself was boiled in oil, but, for reasons of the Holy Spirit, was miraculously saved.  We have to be careful what we wish for.
 
Which brings to mind a special power I might have contracted recently, however temporary.  It is not really cool, like healing the sick or raising the dead, but still, something special: the ability to read the innermost emotions of people, including those of myself.  Of the latter, you might think it obvious, but it’s not: we hide, even from ourselves, our motivations behind personal and social platitudes out of self-defense so that we might not see what insecure and selfish little children we sometimes are.  I include myself first and foremost, and it is not pretty.  It is also alarming to read the complex of motives and emotions in others.  I have to admit that I doubt this ability often, chalking it up to too much caffeine, but sometimes, it is clearly for real.  For instance, I saw a woman at church last weekend who had been told that she has only a short time to live because of cancer.  Her reverent posture in the pew was readable to everyone, but I felt such a deep sense of not only need, but faith and piety – I mean, something startlingly close to Spirit – that I was overwhelmed and had to turn my attention to something else.  It was her special, heart-rending and beautiful time before God.  It brings shivers to me still.
 
I do not regret such moments of insight, and perhaps Spirit is now done with them for me, but I do not like the more trivial aspects of personal insight, which might, as said, be the work of several cups of tea.  What is more remarkable, however, was what I read immediately after coming to the conclusion that I might have been given a gift, however transient or small.  It is from a self-published book, My Life in the Supernatural, by Jose de Santiago, a man who had been part of our group in Medjugorje (a very active Marian site in Bosnia-Herzegovina).  My wife had recently purchased it, and I opened it casually in the middle to get an idea of how it was written.  I immediately came upon his description of his own gift of empathy, something he attributed to the Holy Spirit.  Then I flipped the pages again and came to a point in which he describes his ability to see people in coffins shortly before their actual death.  It made me recall what I had written for the blog on Halloween, the one (immediately above) about ghosts, where I speak of two girls who had prophesied from the Ouija board my death from cancer at age 42.  Jose says that he often sees the death of others through the images in the coffin of close relatives or friends of the person to die rather than the actual person.   At the time of the Ouija board prophesy, I had been with my roommate Mike, who died of cancer some 13 years later at age 36. 
 
I admit that the latter is not necessarily remarkable, but I think the mention in the book of the former – the gift of empathy – is.  This seems to be another meaningful coincidence, or act of synchronicity, whose repeated occurrence in my life is showing more and more that the Holy Spirit is both miraculous and creatively spontaneous.  The gift of empathy is also just the sort of gift an average guy might expect from Spirit, one that is not Five Alarm wonderful, but useful as a tool of learning, both for its pain and its insight.  It can also be very useful when combined with an ability to see into another’s death. 
 
This gift – both parts to it - comes with a big price, however, and the need for pinpoint discernment.   While I have not had the “fortune” of foresight, Jose has lived with this gift for some time, and he has had to be very careful about who is told what and when.  What good would it do to tell Uncle Rick that you saw him in a coffin in a dream?  That would kind of ruin his week, to say the least, unless he had a lot to get off his chest.  Also, as Jose tells it, it is usually not the one in the coffin who is to die, but one who is close.  Sometimes, it is obvious – Uncle Rick’s brother, say, is having severe heart problems – but sometimes not.  In the opening chapters, Jose foresaw the death of his otherwise healthy older brother a week or so before a severe infection sent him to his untimely death.  In this case his brother was represented by a close relative who was in the coffin instead of him.  Who, in this case, was to be told?  And what, exactly, was the advantage to be gained?
 
He answers the latter quickly: he, alone in his family, was prepared for the worst.  He was expecting it, and in expecting it, he was able to help the rest of his family through it.  But, still, the price he has had to pay… He has to see dead people in his dreams.  That would really bother a lot of us.  [Note: later in the book, Jose tells us that the primary purpose for his foresight of death is to pray for that person or persons so that their souls might pass on to heaven.  To aid souls after death is a calling found throughout most cultures into prehistory and probably well beyond.]
 
With the more limited gift of simple empathy, one still has to suffer through the lies that we tell each other, and how we play social games the way a genius plays 3-D chess.  As a by-product, this does clarify why so many people with autism have savant abilities: because they do not have the “gift” of normal empathy, they have all the brain space in the world to be geniuses of another type. 
 
There is, however, a useful side to this minor talent.  Finding that most of us are geniuses of deceit is not a ride in a fun park, but the insight shows how we develop, and how we force others to develop, and in this, we find much of the motivation for why we behave as badly as we do.  We have been hurt all our lives by snubs, and so spend much of our childhood and adolescence in learning how to protect ourselves from further humiliation.  We then go on in later life to show everyone either how great (or how much better than others) we are, or, for those of us who falter in the social hierarchy, just how much we don’t give a damn.  We either strive to rise above others or we resent others based on the painful and complex social interplays that have bombarded us since birth.  This is not a recipe for a good, kind and just world.  This causes, instead, lasting personal, class, and national hatreds, among other ills. 
 
So it is that we understand that we should be, as Jesus says, like the little ones – not in immaturity, but in simplicity and humility.  What power it is to not have to measure our self-worth by others in society; what power it is to simply be as we were intended to be, where we are able to understand this intent in the quiet of a peaceful mind.  John Lennon wrote “Imagine” with absolutely no instructions on how to reach his utopia, but we have already been given the necessary technique.  We were given it by the great philosophers and prophets of the great religions, and for the West, by perhaps the greatest of all, Jesus.  From them we learn not only of the joy of simplicity and honesty, but also the means of attaining that joy – which is to give one’s life, one’s meaning, over to the Holy Spirit, however that is envisioned or spoken of.  There is no self to protect in that space.  There is only ourselves before the entire cosmos, each of us equally fragile and dependent on a power much greater than our own, or of Caesar’s, or of any other human or group of humans. 
 
I busy myself not with great things…Nay rather, I have stilled and quieted my soul like a weaned child.  Like a weaned child on it mother’s lap, so is my soul within me.”  (Psalms 131)
 
Pretty heavy, actually.  It is how small gifts, sometimes gifts of painful inconvenience, can turn into great things.  It is the small mustard seed, the dash of leaven given to life by the Holy Spirit that can grow into something great, or effect everything around it.  This, this spirit, is the super power that each of us can possess.  We must come to it like a child on its mother’s lap – so easy, yet so impossibly humble.
 
That might be too much for me, but I have been told.   I, we, have been told how we might find the greatest gift of all, which is not the raising of people from the dead or making the mountain come to us, but being filled with the Holy Spirit.  With that, nothing else matters, even death.  It, this grace, has no weight at all, but is the weightiest of gifts for those who can reach beyond the subtleties of social sparring.