Each Challenge is Supposed to Bring Out the Best in Us

Challenges will be with us until the day we die. But in God's mind, each challenge is supposed to bring out the best in us. ... Every outcome of every challenge should reveal how God supplies the grace to make it through the seemingly impossible.

Father Leo Patalinghug, Grace before Meals

Amen, amen. This makes all the difference when facing the hard things of life.

Go in Beauty

"When the dung beetle moves,” Hosteen Nashibitti had told him, “know that something has moved it. And know that its movement affects the flight of the sparrow, and that the raven deflects the eagle from the sky, and that the eagle’s stiff wing bends the will of the Wind People, and know that all of this affects you and me, and the flea on the prairie dog and the leaf on the cottonwood.” That had always been the point of the lesson. Interdependency of nature. Every cause has its effect. Every action its reaction. A reason for everything. In all things a pattern, and in this pattern, the beauty of harmony. Thus one learned to live with evil, by understanding it, by reading its cause. And thus one learned, gradually and methodically, if one was lucky, to always “go in beauty,” to always look for the pattern, and to find it.”

Tony Hillerman, Dance Hall of the Dead

This is a favorite part of the Tony Hillerman mysteries. He always includes something fascinating and insightful about the Navajo religion or culture.

Everyday life calls for the equipment provided by daily Scripture reading

What are you saying, man? It's not your business to pay attention to the Bible because you are distracted by thousands of concerns? Then Bible reading belongs more to you than to the monks! For they do not make as much use of the help of the divine Scriptures as those who always have a great many things to do. ... But you are always standing in the line of battle and are constantly being hit, so you need more medicine. For not only does your spouse irritate you, but your son annoys you, and a servant makes you lose your temper. An enemy schemes against you, a friend envies you, a neighbor insults you, a colleague trips you up. Often a lawsuit impends, poverty distresses, loss of possessions brings sorrow. At one moment success puffs you up; at another failure deflates you. Numerous powerful inducements to anger and anxiety, to discouragement and grief, to vanity and loss of sense surround us on every side. A thousand missiles rain down from every direction. And so we constantly need the whole range of equipment supplied by Scripture. ...

Since many things of this kind besiege our soul, we need the divine medicines, so that we might treat the wounds we already have, and so that we might check beforehand the wounds that are not yet, but are going to be, from afar extinguishing the missiles of the devil and repelling them through the constant reading of the divine Scriptures. for it is not possible, not possible for anyone to be saved who does not constantly have the benefit of spiritual reading.

St. John Chrysostom
via The New Jerusalem Bible Saints Devotional Edition

This quote above is only part of a longer piece. It is down to earth, pithy, and full of common sense. I always like seeing things that show our lives are not as different in the basic as we think they are. This one's full of reminders.

I really love this Saints Devotional Bible. It's got quotes that I haven't seen elsewhere but which are perfectly matched to the scripture being commented upon. I also really love Saint John Chrysostom. Every time I read something he's written, no matter where I come across it, I can see why he's called "Golden Tongue." I'm going to have to find a longer work and settle down to taking in his writing.

I dream about forests

There was a tension to the thing, a feeling of mute straining and striving towards some distant and incomprehensible goal. As a wizard, it was something Ponder had only before encountered in acorns: a tiny, soundless voice which said, yes, I am but a small, green, simple object -- but I dream about forests.

Terry Pratchett, Interesting Times

I love the sense of potential ...

Conventional Wisdom — not what you think it is

I remember being dumbfounded when learning that "conventional wisdom" was an invented phrase that specifically means what I always thought it did ... rather than what it is often put forward as meaning, which is "true wisdom."

The following excerpt is heavily edited to get at the essence but I can highly recommend the entire chapter.

Just as truth ultimately serves to create a consensus, so in the short run does acceptability. Ideas come to be organized around what the community as a whole or particular audiences find acceptable.

Numerous factors contribute to the acceptability of ideas. To a large extent, of course, we associate truth with convenience—with what most closely accords with self-interest and personal well-being or promises best to avoid awkward effort or unwelcome dislocation of life. ... But perhaps most important of all, people approve most of what they best understand. ... Therefore we adhere, as though to a raft, to those ideas which represent our understanding.

Because familiarity is such an important test of acceptability, the acceptable ideas have great stability. They are highly predictable. It will be convenient to have a name for the ideas which are esteemed at any time for their acceptability, and it should be a term that emphasizes this predictability. I shall refer to these ideas henceforth as the Conventional Wisdom. [...]

The enemy of conventional wisdom is not ideas but the march of events. As I have noted, the conventional wisdom accommodates itself not to the world that it is meant to interpret, but to the audience's view of the world. Since the latter remains with the comfortable and the familiar, while the world moves on, the conventional wisdom is always in danger of obsolescence. [...]

Ideas need to be tested by their ability, in combination with events, to overcome inertia and resistance. This inertia and resistance the conventional wisdom provides.

John Kenneth Galbraith, The Affluent Society

Remain in harmony with the universe

The Hopis had held a rain dance Sunday, calling on the clouds—their ancestors—to restore the water blessing to the land. Perhaps the kachinas had listened to their Hopi children. Perhaps not. It was not a Navajo concept, this idea of adjusting nature to human needs. The Navajo adjusted himself to remain in harmony with the universe. When nature withheld rain, the Navajo sought the pattern of this phenomenon—as he sought the pattern of all things—to find its beauty and live in harmony with it.

Tony Hillerman, Listening Woman

I know that I read some of Tony Hillerman's mysteries when they first came out. However, it took a trip to Palo Duro Canyon where the gift shop had many Hillerman mysteries featured to make me revisit them. I now can appreciate them for more than the mystery and environment. The Navajo culture and beliefs, as well as that of other Indian tribes in the area, are a background against which all else is measured. 

Now, as a Catholic, I can appreciate those resonances much more. We take what God gives us, the good and the bad, knowing that it is the way to live in harmony with His plan.

Where did you get all this, and from whom?

Recognize to whom you owe the fact that you exist, that you breathe, that you understand, that you are wise, and, above all, that you know God and hope for the kingdom of heaven and the vision of glory, now darkly as in a mirror but then with greater fullness and purity. You have been made a son of God, co-heir with Christ. Where did you get all this, and from whom?

Let me turn to what is of less importance: the visible world around us. What benefactor has enabled you to look out upon the beauty of the sky, the sun in its course, the circle of the moon, the countless number of stars, with the harmony and order that are theirs, like the music of a harp? Who has blessed you with rain, with the art of husbandry, with different kinds of food, with the arts, with houses, with laws, with states, with a life of humanity and culture, with friendship and the easy familiarity of kinship?

Who has given you dominion over animals, those that are tame and those that provide you with food? Who has made you lord and master of everything on earth? In short, who has endowed you with all that makes man superior to all other living creatures?

Is it not God who asks you now in your turn to show yourself generous above all other creatures and for the sake of all other creatures? Because we have received from him so many wonderful gifts, will we not be ashamed to refuse him this one thing only, our generosity? Though he is God and Lord he is not afraid to be known as our Father. Shall we, for our part, repudiate those who are our kith and kin?

Brethren and friends, let us never allow ourselves to misuse what has been given us by God’s gift. If we do, we shall hear Saint Peter say: Be ashamed of yourselves for holding on to what belongs to someone else. Resolve to imitate God’s justice, and no one will be poor. Let us not labor to heap up and hoard riches while others remain in need. If we do, the prophet Amos will speak out against us with sharp and threatening words: Come now, you that say: When will the new moon be over, so that we may start selling? When will the sabbath be over, so that we may start opening our treasures?

Let us put into practice the supreme and primary law of God. He sends down rain on just and sinful alike, and causes the sun to rise on all without distinction. To all earth’s creatures he has given the broad earth, the springs, the rivers and the forests. He has given the air to the birds, and the waters to those who live in the water. He has given abundantly to all the basic needs of life, not as a private possession, not restricted by law, not divided by boundaries, but as common to all, amply and in rich measure. His gifts are not deficient in any way, because he wanted to give equality of blessing to equality of worth, and to show the abundance of his generosity.

St. Gregory of Nazianzen, Office of Readings, Liturgy of the Hours

This is long but so very good!

God in his mercy has preserved me

there is no sin or crime committed by another which I myself am not capable of committing through my weakness; and if I have not committed it, it is because God, in his mercy, has not allowed me to and has preserved me in good.

St. Augustine, Confessions

Amen, amen.

The Single Most Important Lesson of Mr. Rogers' Life

“If you had one final broadcast,” I asked, “one final opportunity to address your television neighbors, and you could tell them the single most important lesson of your life, what would you say?”

​He paused a moment and then said, ever so slowly: Well, I would want [those] who were listening somehow to know that they had unique value, that there isn’t anybody in the whole world exactly like them and that there never has been and there never will be. And that they are loved by the Person who created them, in a unique way. If they could know that and really know it and have that behind their eyes, they could look with those eyes on their neighbor and realize, “My neighbor has unique value too; there’s never been anybody in the whole world like my neighbor, and there never will be.” If they could value that person—if they could love that person—in ways that we know that the Eternal loves us, then I would be very grateful.

Amy Hollingsworth, The Simple Faith of Mister Rogers

Yes.

The Whole World Listened

But when the fairy sang the whole world listened to him. Stephen felt clouds pause in their passing; he felt sleeping hills shift and murmur; he felt cold mists dance. He understood for the first time that the world is not dumb at all, but merely waiting for someone to speak to it in a language it understands. In the fairy’s song the earth recognized the names by which it called itself.

Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

This is so beautifully written and says so much to readers about the nature of fairy magic (as opposed to English magic). But mostly I love it for how it took hold of my imagination.

Sin and Trampling on People

I've done many things that I thought I would never dare do because they were sins. But I didn't realize then that the consequence of sin is that you have to trample on other people.

Sigrid Undset, Kristin Lavransdatter

Kristin Lavransdatter was an incredibly rich read during Lent. This quote shows you a little bit of why that is.

The first job in the morning

It comes the very moment you wake up each morning. All your wishes and hopes for the day rush at you like wild animals. And the first job each morning consists simply in shoving them all back; in listening to that other voice, taking that other point of view, letting that other larger, stronger, quieter life come flowing in. And so on, all day. Standing back from all your natural fussings and frettings; coming in out of the wind.

C.S. Lewis

This is especially appropriate for me since I've been reading Romano Guardini's book about prayer which is talking about "recollectedness." And recollectedness is that "coming in out of the wind" that Lewis mentions, during which we may hear that other voice and let that other life come flowing in.

Challenging orthodoxy

At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas of which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is "not done" to say it ... Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionalb eopinion is almost never given a fair hearing, eithe rin the popular press or in the high-brow periodicals

George Orwell

As we all know, "the more things change, the more they stay the same."

Blessings and Afflictions

Let's all keep this in mind as we race to meet the deadline for income taxes!

"I dreamed I was getting a guided tour of heaven?" Emmylou says. "I was wearing a jumpsuit and a hard hat and my tour guide, he was the same as I was, and we were in this giant building, kind of an industrial shed like in those boring old movies they used to show us in high school, how they make paper or ice cream. And there was this big huge machine in it, whirring and clanking away, and there was a conveyor belt coming out of one end of it, and on the conveyor belt were rows of golden bricks, but softer: they looked like giant Twinkies, row after row of them, and when they got to the end of the conveyor belt they fell off of it. I looked to see where they were falling to and I saw that there was a big hole in the floor there and through it I could see clouds and blue sky and the earth far below. I asked the guide what the Twinkie things were, and he said they were blessings, and I remember thinking, in the dream, how marvelous is the Lord showering all these blessings down on us. Then we moved on, across an alley and into another big huge shed with the same kind of machine cranking away, the same conveyor belt, the same giant Twinkies falling down, and I said to the guide, 'Oh, these are more blessings,' and he said, 'No, those are afflictions,' and I said, 'Oh, but they look just the same as the blessings,' and he said, 'They are the same!'"

Valley of Bones by Michael Gruber

This is why St. Paul tells us "In all circumstances give thanks, for this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus" (1 Thessalonians 5:18). Jesus' point of view is all encompassing and he sees far beyond our current moment to the good we might experience from our afflictions. I have experienced this myself. Never gonna love those afflictions but with the vantage point of time and trust we can see the blessings that come from them.

I see that I never officially reviews the book. A partial review is here. Super thought provoking and gets tons of things right, just as you can see above.

The Bible in Couplets

I'm a sucker for this kind of thing. I shared it here before way back in '05 and once more since then. High time to read it again!

Read aloud for full impact.

The Bible in Couplets
by Christopher Howse

God makes the heavens and the earth
And finds them very nice.

When Adam eats forbidden fruit
He forfeits Paradise.

Mankind grows worse, but Noah's ark
Keeps eight souls in the dry.

There's much begetting; Abraham
Is chosen by and by.

His progeny are Egypt's slaves
Till Moses leads them out;

The Ten Commandments tell them what
Morality's about.

The Israelites gain Canaan, and
Surrounding peoples smite.

King David takes Bathsheba from
Uriah the Hittite,

He then repents, writes psalms, but sins
By numbering Israel,

Repents again, is told by God
His house shall never fail.

A golden temple of the Lord
Is built by Solomon.

The exiled Israelites hang harps
In fluvial Babylon.

Lions don't eat Daniel; Job gets boils;
The prophets prophesy;

Jonah meets fish; the Preacher says
That all is vanity.

Jesus is born in Bethlehem
And is baptised by John

In Jordan, and the Spirit dove
Then him descends upon.

He heals the sick, walks on the sea
And multiplies the bread,

Shares supper with apostles, then
Is crucified, and dead.

He rises from the dead, is seen
By many, then ascends

To heaven, from which he'll return
It says, when this world ends.

Saul (later Paul) falls off his horse,
Turns Christian, hits the trail,

Writes letters to the churches and
Ends life locked up in jail.

Four horsemen, beasts and trumpets fill
The Book of Revelation,

Whose meaning has been subject to
Much vexed interpretation.

My little children in Christ, my joy and my crown

Masaccio. Baptism of the Neophytes

I speak to you who have just been reborn in baptism, my little children in Christ, you who are the new offspring of the Church, gift of the Father, proof of Mother Church's fruitfulness. All of you who stand fast in the Lord are a holy seed, a new colony of bees, the very flower of our ministry and fruit of our toil, my joy and my crown. ...

St. Augustine, Sermo 8

I love how tenderly this is expressed.

Remember, Easter continues until Pentecost, which is May 24 this year. Keep the celebration going!

C.S. Lewis on writing The Screwtape Letters

If Screwtape was written with complete sincerity, the actual task of writing it proved to be remarkably unpleasant. "Though I had never written anything more easily," Lewis recalled, "I never wrote with less enjoyment. Though it was easy to twist one's mind into the diabolical attitude, it was not fun or not for long. The strain produced a sort of spiritual cramp. The world into which I had to project myself while I spoke through Screwtape was all dust, grit, thirst, and itch. It almost smothered me before I was done.

Humphrey Carpenter, The Inklings

Our Catholic women's book club is going to be discussing the Screwtape Letters tonight. This gives it extra focus. Lewis was truly chanelling something diabolical.

Easter Friday: Here are the beginnings of creatures newly formed

Icon of the Resurrection

Here, then, is the grace conferred by these heavenly mysteries, the gift which Easter brings, the most longed for feast of the year; here are the beginnings of creatures newly formed: children born from the life giving font of holy Church, born anew with the simplicity of little ones, and crying out with the evidence of a clean conscience. Chaste fathers and inviolate mothers accompany this new family, countless in number, born to new life through faith. As they emerge from the grace giving womb of the font, a blaze of candles burns brightly beneath the tree of faith. The Easter festival brings the grace of holiness from heaven to men. Through the repeated celebration of the sacred mysteries they receive the spiritual nourishment of the sacraments. ...

Easter homily by an ancient author,
via the Liturgy of the Hours

I loved this because it took me back to when I, too, was newly formed and coming into my new life in the Church.

Our hearts are divided

Continued from Monday's quote ...

There is no one, Kristin, who does not love and fear God. But it’s because our hearts are divided between love for God and fear of the Devil, and love for this world and this flesh, that we are miserable in life and death. For if a man knew no yearning for God and God’s being, then he would thrive in Hell, and we alone would not understand that he had found his heart’s desire. Then the fire would not burn him if he did not long for coolness, and he would not feel the pain of the serpent’s bite if he did not long for peace.

Kristin looked up into his face; she understood nothing of what he said.

Brother Edvin continued, “It was because of God’s mercy toward us that He saw how our hearts were split, and He came down to live among us, in order to taste, in fleshly form, the temptations of the Devil when he entices us with power and glory, and the menace of the world when it offers us blows and contempt and the wounds of sharp nails in our hands and feet. In this manner He showed us the way and allowed us to see His love.”

Sigrid Undset, Kristin Lavransdatter

Definitely worth our contemplation during Lent

The dragon is awfully small

“It seems to me that the dragon is awfully small,” said Kristin, looking at the image of the saint who was her namesake. “It doesn’t look as if it could swallow up the maiden.”

“And it couldn’t, either,” said Brother Edvin. “It was no bigger than that. Dragons and all other creatures that serve the Devil only seem big as long as we harbor fear within ourselves. But if a person seeks God with such earnestness and desire that he enters into His power, then the power of the Devil at once suffers such a great defeat that his instruments become small and impotent. Dragons and evil spirits shrink until they are no bigger than goblins and cats and crows. As you can see, the whole mountain that Saint Sunniva was trapped inside is so small that it will fit on the skirt of her cloak.”

“But weren’t they inside the caves?” asked Kristin. “Saint Sunniva and the Selje men? Isn’t that true?”

The monk squinted at her and smiled again.

“It’s both true and not true. It seemed to be true for the people who found the holy bodies. And it seemed true to Sunniva and the Selje men, because they were humble and believed that the world is stronger than all sinful people. They did not imagine that they might be stronger than the world because they did not love it. But if they had only known, they could have taken all the mountains and flung them out into the sea like tiny pebbles. No one and nothing can harm us, child, except what we fear and love.”
Sigrid Undset, Kristin Lavransdatter

I'll continue this on Wednesday. You can see why this is perfect Lenten reading. These sorts of conversations are the backdrop for how we see Kristin's life go and the decisions she makes.