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There is an old movie classic from the 1930’s starring Gary Cooper titled “Sergeant York.”  It is loosely based on the real story of a hillbilly who becomes a great hero in WWI, almost against his will.  His is what I call the classic sin- and -redemption story of southern country men, where heavy drinking and fighting and immoral behavior lead to some sort of dark climax that brings the young man back to his Christian roots.  For York, the movie begins with his rowdy years, where he has just been humiliated or cheated at cards or both (it’s been a while).  We see him on a dark and stormy night riding his horse through the mountain country on his way to shoot the man who has hurt his pride.   The music crescendos as the thunder crashes, and then a bolt of lightning strikes him and throws him from his horse.  When he comes to, he awakens into a revelation of God.  Awed and confused, he seeks the tutelage of the country preacher, played by a sage Walter Brennan, from whom he learns the peaceful ways of the New Testament.  Then he gets his draft notice for the war.  “Thou shalt not kill” makes him refuse service at first even if it means prison, until the preacher convinces him that it is God’s will that he should serve Him even in the trenches.  As it turns out, he does kill several Germans, but he also captures several dozen more who will not kill or be killed.  He returns a hero, feeling he has done God’s work, to whom he gives all the credit.
 
There are lots of themes here we can play with, but the biggest point of the movie for religious people concerns something from the Bible that I missed in my ignorance when I saw the film decades ago: that is, that York’s story recapitulates the life and saving grace of Saul, who later became the famous Paul of the New Testament.  Most know his story, but for a recap: Saul was an ardent Pharisee who saw the Christian “way” as a heresy that would destroy all possibilities of the coming of the true messiah.  He sought out Christian Jews (most were Jewish converts in the early years) and had them sent to prison to be tried and oftentimes killed.  He was on his way to Damascus, where many Christian Jews then lived, when a bolt from the blue came, knocking him to the ground (or off his horse, as is famously depicted in art).  He then heard Jesus tell him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”  In that moment, Saul understood that Jesus was the foretold Messiah.  He remained blinded for three days, whereupon “something like scales” fell from his eyes and he regained his sight. He then became the greatest proselytizer of what would become the Christian faith, and his story is behind the famous phrase, “I was blind but now I see.”  
 
These, the stories of Sgt. York and Saul, portray a fundamental theme in human culture that Joseph Campbell calls the “The Hero’s Journey.” Paul’s story is the Hero’s Journey for Western nations, and it permeates our general culture whether we know it or not.  While Hero’s journeys share fundamental qualities, they also differ, and Paul’s differs from many others in one very important aspect: his initial wrong-ness.  He begins his story as the bad guy, the anti-hero, before he becomes the good hero on his quest.  What this variation has done for us is enormous: it tells us that God, or the power of heaven, is behind us always even if we fall short of the heroic.  We learn that God is all about forgiveness and second (or 77nd) chances.  Once we “see,” we find that we, too, can become heroes, no matter what sort of coward or evil monster we had been beforehand.  This is a tremendous message of salvation that is perhaps the greatest strength in Western culture.  
 
Culture stories are made easier to understand through their heroic, or overlarge, proportions.  Most of us are not on our way to kill someone, and we don’t usually receive a bolt of lightning to make us see the light, but they still work through us in small ways.  I was made aware of this – and was given the impetus for this essay - the other day during a rehearsal of a performance group I am in.  My “bolt of lightning” was the gift of an outside look at what was going on in my own mind during the group dynamics, something I would ordinarily experience as un-analyzed emotions.  It was disturbing, reminiscent of the painful days in junior high school.  I found that in the back of my mind I was comparing myself to others, looking for favor from the director, joining in majority opinions against the minority, harboring resentment as others joined against my minority opinions, and on and on.  All was on a subtle level, mind you, with little to no conscious hint to any of this.  Normally, none of us would be aware of these dynamics.  But there they were, presented to me clear as day in an ongoing inner dialogue that made a mockery of my normal self-image.  
 
It is the beginning of the story of Saul, and of Sgt. York, and of a thousand characters portrayed in our movies and books.  It starts with a crummy guy who becomes aware of how crummy he is.  Somewhere inside he comes to understand what it is to be a good guy – call this the conscience or God’s inner voice, or what you will – and he finds that he has fallen far short of this image.  As a hero, he, I, we, must then proceed to work on the flaws that have been exposed.  In ancient Europe and elsewhere, the hero’s journey was to slay the dragon; in more modern times, it is to slay the beast within.  But the modern Western journey goes one step further.  Through Paul’s story, we understand that the beast within is caused by a lack of the Holy Spirit, the power of God, who we must let in because THAT is the source of our strength and the knowledge of righteousness.  We cannot do it on our own.  That is our real lightning bolt – the knowledge not only that we are wrong, or less than heroic, but that we need an outside power to bring us to a more heroic state – and that it is there, freely given for the asking.
 
It’s one hell of a story and the essence of hope itself.  Like a naughty little kid – or a junior high student in a difficult class – we fail and complain and cry, but are taken in again by our parents or teachers and are told the error of our ways, and then given the correct way.  It is them, not us, who teach us what we should be and then help us to become it.   It is our story, the story of our lives, recapitulated from the beginning until the end, from the cradle of our humanness to the point of our maturity, when we can rise above mere humanity to the hero’s realm.  It is the classic Western tale of sin and redemption, and like all the best culture stories, it works.  What comes after the “happily ever after” will probably always be unknown to mortals, but its threshold is to be reached through the mystery and gift of our heroic journey.  

Today, the traditional Christmas essay in the Essay section of the website.  Merry Christmas!  FK

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In response to Cal’s comment on the blog below, I couldn’t agree more – and disagree more.  I will explain by means of Medjugorje, a current unofficial miracle site of the Virgin Mary in Bosnia-Herzegovina. 
 
Back in February or late January of this year, I came across something that mentioned Medjugorje that peaked my interest.  I had read a book about it almost 20 years earlier, had been fascinated, and then had forgotten it.  What were the odds that I would ever fly to the back woods of the Balkans?  This time, however, we had gotten to know a woman who had gone there who had absolutely loved it.  I had not seen her in nearly a year, but after I brought it up with my wife, we discussed asking her exactly how she had gone about making that trip.  A few days later, circumstances had me attend mass by myself at a time that I normally did not go.  Shortly after I sat down in the pew, this woman and her family settled in on the opposite end.  After mass, I remembered the Medjogorje thing and asked her about it, to which she said she would give the information to my wife at some time.  It happened that she got in touch with us within a day or so, actually dropping the material off in our mailbox.  When we saw what she had given us, we were hooked.  She had gone with a writer and filmmaker, Sean Bloomfield, who had a personal relationship with Mirjana, one of the visionaries who had seen and spoken to the Virgin since the early 1980’s.  Vicki looked him up and saw that he was bringing a group to Medjugorje that March, and that there were only two days left to sign in.  This didn’t give us much time to hem and haw, and in an odd sort of haze, by the next day we found ourselves signed up with money sent to fly to the far south east of Europe. 
 
From that moment on, even before the flight, I became a real Catholic with a dedication to Mary.  Something had just clicked.  Medjugorje itself was an international sea of faith that was as overwhelming as a tsunami, and as welcome as a soft summer breeze.  Even so, on the night before we flew back, I had a locution – a man’s voice - in a special dream that said, “How hard for you to believe while you are here.  How much harder it will be when you are gone.” 
 
True.  I have always been and will always be, at least somewhat, a doubting Thomas.  Even though I have gotten the faith, it still slips from me on a regular basis.  I do not want to be anybody’s fool, and certainly not one of those guys with a Bible in his hand preaching repentance on the college green.  And yet – how can I doubt it?  I have felt the Holy Spirit and it is nothing at all like I had imagined.  It is total mystery and total creativity.  This is probably why belief in it is so hard: it is like nothing else, and when it leaves one’s consciousness, it is like the passing wind.  It cannot be anchored.  But I have felt it, and even my full introduction to it through Medjugorje is surrounded by seemingly miraculous circumstances.  Yet still I doubt.
 
Cal is right, though.  In the Gospels, we have the scene after the crucifixion of Jesus, when all the disciples except Thomas are gathered in a house hiding from the authorities.  They are terrified and in shock.  The man who they thought was the Messiah – the one who would lead Israel to head all nations - has been killed by the Romans like a common criminal.  Then he appears in resurrected form and speaks to them before vanishing.  A little later, Thomas returns and is told the unbelievable news, and he replies that he will not believe it – that he will be nobody’s fool – until he puts his hands in Jesus’s wounds.  Jesus then comes back and asks a stunned Thomas to place his hands in his wounds.  Thomas of course believes, but Jesus reminds us all that ‘he believes in me because he has seen.  Blessed are those who believe without seeing.’
 
Miracles: Peter was the first to realize that Jesus was The One and Thomas the last, needing a miracle to believe even though he had seen dozens if not hundreds of miracles already from the incarnate Jesus.  Blessed is he who does not need miracles to believe, but much of the world does, again and again and again.  It is not enough to read of the miracles of Jesus from men who died painful deaths for their belief, something few would ever do for a lie.  Still, we need more and more.  The cardiologist mentioned in the former blog listed several verifiable miracles in his book, but I bet few skeptics were convinced.  Yes, we can understand that those not introduced to certain religions might not be convinced that it was the Holy Spirit of the Trinity that did the healing, but to deny that something beyond our understanding – something spiritual – was and is going on with these miracles is a miracle of willed ignorance itself.  And yet many if not most of the leaders of this brave new world of technological miracles try to convince us that nothing is happening except perhaps a little “mind over matter” wizardry, whatever that could be.
 
That is why I compared such denial to climate change denial – because many of the very people who criticize those who do not accept the standard model for a disastrous future deny the miracles that are all about them.  Again, these do not logically lead to only a belief in Jesus, but they do lead to a belief in the spiritual.  That the Spirit would bring me to Christianity is obvious on the face of it: that is my background, and that is how it appeared to me.  It most certainly does appear to others through a different lens, but that does not change the hard data that we find again and again that points us towards the reality of the spiritual realm.  Like those who believe in the worst- case scenario of climate change, such evidence should change our world.  Really, it should affect our lives even more than the climate change disaster scenario, as the fact of the existence of the Holy Spirit is already before us, rather than still only a model for a future possible reality.  But for most, as with Thomas, the reality of Spirit evidenced by others is simply not enough to change them.
 
That is why we need miracles right in front of us, as often as possible.  They are a big deal, as Jesus himself understood.  It is better to believe without them, but we know that lies are perpetuated again and again by people with self-interests – maybe even including some climate-change scenarios.  We of the current era are skeptical; we do not wish to be made fools, even as our skepticism might make us even greater fools.
 
So, Cal, you are right – we should not need miracles; but you are wrong, too – in this existence, we do.  And we have them, and they point to one thing – that Spirit exists.  In that, our lives should be irrevocably changed.  For me, I believe, or at least hope, that such miracles have changed my life forever.  I should have believed without “seeing,” I know, but we of the world are, as Luke of the Gospels put it, a stiff - necked race.  It is us stiff-necked ones who need the miracles, the greatest being the very grace of faith that allows those others who are more blessed to see without putting their hands in the wounds.      
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
     

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Last week I heard a show featuring two for-real climate experts, one an ecologist and the other an oceanographer, who were debating the whole climate change thing.  Yes, they were debating, not denying or acclaiming, giving their interpretations of the data and the models.   They both agreed that warming was occurring, and that roughly half of the warming was due to human activity, largely because of fossil fuel emissions (there is also deforestation and plankton death or growth, and more).  They disagreed, however, on what the rise of global temperatures would be, and how much life on earth – and humans – would be affected.  The ecological biologist looked to the 5 degree F rise model and spoke of extinctions; the oceanographer spoke of a 1 or, at most 2 degree F rise and said that life would overall benefit from the increased carbon in the atmosphere.  Both were using the same data, and both were genuine climate specialists.  They disagreed on some things, but agreed on others.  Of the first, they each gave credence to different computer models generated from the same data in an attempt to peek into the future.   The models both went in a similar direction, but with very important differences.   
 
We might say, then, that we can expect some man-affected climate change in the future, but how much we simply do not know.   And yet, the French government has caused street riots because of plans to tax carbon-based fuels out of existence.  For the first time in ages, it seems that the people governing France have found their Faith in an unrealized and unproven prophecy.  
 
Religions, too, almost always have some grand prophecy.  We have gone through some of them here, such as the coming of Lono to the Hawaiians and of Quetzalcoatl to the Aztecs, both of which have actually come true, although not exactly as expected.   Those of scientific mind do not know how these things can be, and most certainly don’t put full credence into the prophecies yet to be fulfilled, such as the Second Coming.  Still, there is some pretty strong evidence that some kind of spiritual force (or forces) does exist in this world that can affect us in powerful ways.  Like the computer models based on the evidence of global warming, we can haggle about the interpretation of spiritual data, but we should not doubt that much of the data is based on real-life, real-time spiritual activity that can be documented as clearly as the numbers on a thermometer.  And yet, there are deniers.   The “why” of this is fascinating, and gives us a picture into the nature of the spiritual itself.    
 
Evidence of spiritual power: I have just read two books that proclaim the reality of Jesus and the Holy Spirit as put forth by the New Testament by way of documented miracles of healing.  One, Touching Heaven, is by cardiologist Chauncey Crandall, who is by profession and creed a healer.  At the beginning of his practice, he was a compartmentalized Christian, keeping his professional life and his spiritual life separate, but with time and circumstance, he began to see that faith and prayer sometimes worked when regular medicine did not.  Like someone testing ice, he began to make small forays into combining the two, finding quickly that not only did the two often overlap, but that all but one of his patients over the years actually welcomed the addition of his spiritual attention. 
 
They had good reason to.  While he gives many examples of extraordinary spiritual healing, the one that made me sit up with shock and awe was about a woman born with one leg shorter than the other.   As she aged, the disparity in leg length increased to five inches, forcing her to wear a large heal on the shorter until eventually, she had to use a wheel chair to get around.  By the time she came to Dr. Crandall’s attention, she was obviously beyond the ordinary means of being cured.  By then, Dr.  Crandall was not shy about his faith healing, and so (after asking the woman’s permission) he began to pray for her leg to heal, somehow, in his office.  Nothing happened at first, and so he said something like, “Come on, Jesus, I know you can do it!   By the power of your name, heal this woman’s leg!”  Then both watched as the leg grew to normal length as the woman screamed, not in pain but in amazement.  After, since her leg had grown to full size before their very eyes, she had to take her special shoes off to walk barefoot out of the doctor’s office.  Both were still alive as of his writing, about 6 years ago, with all the evidence of the woman’s short leg still stacked up in her medical records.  The facts can be checked.  How does one interpret this besides the doctor’s own interpretation of healing by the Holy Spirit?
 
Then there is Charles Price, a doctor of religion born in the late 1800’s (making this book, The Real Faith, that much cheaper).  After some struggle with his choice of vocation, he became a Protestant minister in the 1910’s, counting himself a member of the rational clergy – that is, one who placed such things as miracles in the Santa Claus sack for kiddies.  After being persuaded to go to a Pentecostal - style meeting, however, where he ended up on the floor speaking in the tongues of the Holy Spirit, his position changed.  He became open to the power of Spirit and witnessed many genuine miraculous healings.  He also quickly found that he, too, could bring healing down to the crowds, and for the next several years, he helped in healing dozens of lost causes, many of which, again, can be documented.  However, he was disturbed by the greater number of people who he could not cure.  He knew that he believed, and usually that the people believed; so what was missing?   
 
The question was answered for him by revelation through both Spirit and the Bible.  He found that it was faith rather than belief that cured – that is, that it was through the action of God on the heart and soul rather than by the will of mind that miracles occurred.  Humans cannot will anything beyond the normal physical; rather, they have to rely totally on the grace, or the gift, of faith by God.  To implore God continually helps, but God will do what he will in his own time.  We humans simply do not have the power.  It is not, then, a matter of mind over matter, but of grace bestowed by God through faith that we can truly move mountains. 
 
 This is a good thing.  If we could will healing, or will getting a pony or moving a mountain, we would all will our way into blind alleys.  We do not know what is best for us.  Think of what you would have willed for yourself at the age of 5, or 15, or 25.  In my case I know without question that my answered desires would have ended in disaster. 
 
This explanation of faith, that it is given to us as a grace, not as a power of our own will, explains the incomprehension and often hostility of many in the scientific community to something that so obviously has real-life results in the real, physical world.  For one, since this holy power cannot be compelled by our own will through some formula or method, it takes away individual control.  Rather, it requires a humbling of self so that Spirit can dominate our will.  This is not welcome by those who wish to control their environment through knowledge.  Second, the power of God through the Holy Spirit is so vastly beyond the limits of this world and human reasoning that the laws governing this power cannot ever be worked out through our own thought.  Again, we must become compliant and meek as little children to receive this vast power, if we receive it at all.  This is not the kind of power the scientific community seeks.
 
And so, the reality of Spirit, even as it has been evidenced since the time of Christ and before, is met with greater and greater denial.  It is not what science wants, and so it is simply pushed out of mind, along with all the evidence.  Even as global warming deniers are denigrated for refusing to see the evidence – even though this very evidence has yet to produce most of the feared results – those who seem to be in control of global information likewise deny what is clearly before them.  While it is true that many of the models based on the power of these “miracles” – the religious prophesies – have yet to come to pass, the information- people do not care to even look at the facts that support them.   They are deniers by belief, not by reason, which is just what they claim to hate most.
 
What is more important, though – certainly to Pastor Price - is to understand that faith is both infinitely powerful and wholly dependent on the will of God.  While our prayers can help bring it to us, it is ultimately God’s decision as to how, and to whom, this power will show itself by overcoming natural law.  We must understand even as we find ourselves or others in desperate straits that his will, not ours, will be done, and that this is ultimately for the best.  But that this power manifests itself today, much as it did in Biblical times, is really beyond question.  We have, then, the verifiable data.  Now, we only have to fit it to the right model.  
 
 
 
    
 
 
 
 
 
      
 
 
           

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            If you were from a foreign country and wanted to know who The Man – the segment of society in most control – was, you could come to me.  I am always against The Man.  I may have it wrong, of course, but at least you could get a sense of what some citizens see as the authority structure, and also a view of a strong American trait.  We are, after all, a product of fighting the establishment, even if that is seen only in terms of selfish interests.  Selfishness, at least financial selfishness, is not the cause of the rebellious nature in a lot of us Americans, though.  We just automatically buck The Man.  We do it self-righteously, too, our noses to the ground and our shoulders stiffened, ready for the fight.  We are proud to be rebels. 
 
            There are rebels, though, and then there are rebels.  My rebellious nature has repeatedly hurt my chances at becoming a high-status member of the establishment – of course – and, in hindsight, a lot of my stiff-necked attitude was based on a grandiose sense of self.  Still, we basic American rebels don’t smash windows or burn flags.  We don’t hate people with opposing political views.  We don’t live in crowded basement apartment with ten other hard-core rebels/anarchists because we are too proud to work for The Man, even if that man runs a bagel shop.  Ultimately, while we might be harming ourselves with our own form of pride, we still enjoy life and the privileges we have been given as members of this society, and simply as human beings.   Not so much the brick – throwers. 
 
            I was given to think of these things again when I heard a discussion about happiness on the radio (Relevant Radio, quoting a piece from conservative Prager University).  A study done on happiness – on who was happy and why – concluded that the essence of happiness is gratitude.   If I were asked the question about happiness, I would have answered off- the -cuff that it had to do with Maslow’s famous pyramid of fulfillment: first, the basics of food and shelter, then companionship and sex, then comfort, then finally self-actualization, meaning fulfillment on some amorphous spiritual level.  Given my nature now, I might have simplified it all by saying “God Realization,” however undefined that would be for many people.  But gratitude gives us the essence of happiness in the most basic and tangible way. 
 
            This does not suit one hundred percent of situations.  My form of rebellion was, and sometimes still is, just a reaction inherited from my family, but sometimes rebellion is necessary.  Sometimes things are so wrong that something, even something violent, must be done.  But this must be measured against what we have.  In our country, our wrongs are so far outweighed by our rights that a sense of rebellion, which signifies dissatisfaction with the current situation, should not be such as to make us unhappy overall.  We have so much to be grateful for that protest should count as something minor in our lives, as compared to our state of being.   We might have very good reasons for being unhappy – bad marriage, loss of job, illness, kids on drugs, etc. – but these are personally specific, to be dealt with on the personal level.  We should not blame our government or society for our unhappiness.  We might be unhappy with a situation that seems beyond our control, but that is no excuse for throwing bricks.
 
            Putting that aside, we quickly understand why this study was taken up by conservative commentators, because ingratitude was also linked to entitlements.  They do not have to be government entitlements; they could be the entitlements, say, of spoiled rich children, but still, when we come to expect something that is not from the fruits of our own efforts, we become unhappy.  We become unhappy because we have misallocated the source of our happiness, handing this power over to the things other people can give us. We feel so unfulfilled that our sense of gratitude is replaced by frustration and anger, which makes us even more unhappy.     
 
            Gratefulness: it is a simple word that, once unfolded, is anything but.   There are the small ‘gratefuls’ of course: a thank you for a present, or a nod at the opening of a door when needed; there are the  medium gratefuls for, say, a stranger helping you start your car, or the rain stopping for a wedding; but these are teasers to the real thing.  The real thing is as involved as your kid being saved after a car accident, or as simple as standing out on the porch in the morning and taking a big breath of air, face open to the sky.  These big gratefuls have no religion, but I do not believe that they can come from militant atheists.  Those are people who rebel against even a supernatural power, and they insist that everything they see is by chance.  To what, then, can they be grateful?  But the big grateful can come from intellectual atheists, proving really that they are not atheists at all.  This is so, even though a big grateful does not necessarily refer to the Christian God, or to the ancestors, or to Vishnu.  Those, after all, can only be projections of something that is too great for us to capture in words or images.  Rather, the big grateful is often to an unknown divine source, to an internal recognition of that big Something, even if it is not otherwise expressed.  The Big Grateful, then - like it or not - is praise and thanks to God.  And, as the study shows, gratitude is the quintessence of happiness, the bigger the better.     
 
            Praising God: when we hear or see that, we might think of starry-eyed born-agains who preach to us nonstop until we are forced to run for an exit.  It is true – we are not all made for or are ready for that kind of Word, although many are.  Still, it is pretty clear that being Grateful with a big “G” is really praise for God.  It is what we live for, and the only way we can love life.  It is this that we offer when we are blown away by the beauty of a landscape, or by the intricate order of molecules, or by the coincidences that have made so much of our lives, such as those that brought us together for marriage and families. 
 
Considering this, it is obvious that the best way to increase our happiness is to increase our sense of Gratitude towards life.  Since this is basically praise to God, it is also obvious that we can increase our gratitude towards life by increasing our praise for God.  We might also do so by traveling to exotic and beautiful places or by listening to fine music, but underneath, the road to gratitude and happiness eventually leads to, and comes from, God.  This we can find right here at home, right now, or at any place or time.
 
If that is not an eye-opener for you, it has been for me.  When I realized this, I realized that I had known it all along – that my striving for Maslow’s self-actualization has always been about seeking God.  And for this, for being given this understanding and this impulse towards God, I am endlessly grateful.