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BETH: I realize, in reading your posts Mike, that a lot of the
premises that you base your arguments on are not my premises, and
therefore I don't know how to answer your questions. I also can't
figure out if you are playing a devil's advocate, trying to draw
responses from us, or if you are seeking answers.
MIKE: The answer is probably all three. Everyone seeks and needs
answers. Sometimes messages are posted here that make no sense, but
people blithely don't comment. From time time -- not always -- I like
to comment. If I'm wrong, so be it. No one would post messages to a
public discussion board, unless he or she wanted responses. But the
response is not always a reply posting. Sometimes the desired
response is reflection on the part of the reader. In this case, I did
hope to open a dialogue about the questions I posed.
BETH: For example, I don't see/know God as someone/thing that I am
supposed to "please" by things that I do or don't do. I don't
question or doubt or need to prove my "pleasingness".
MIKE: Who is right and who is wrong on a life and death issue like abortion?
I can make seemingly noble arguments on either side of that debate.
In wrestling with that issue, and with other important issues, I come
down to the same question: is that action pleasing to God? It is a
shorthand way of addressing a myriad of different moral and ethical
questions at once.
The fundamentalist Baptist minister would tell you to lead your life
one way, a Catholic priest would tell you to lead your life another
way, an Islamic cleric might have another prescription as well. Who
should you believe? Who should you follow? I like the question: "is
this pleasing to God?" It helps me distinguish the good in organized
religions from a history filled with some bad actions.
MERTON: "The true contemplative . . . does not even anticipate a
special kind of transformation. He does not demand light instead of
darkness. He waits on the Word of God in silence, and when he is
"answered", it is not so much by a word that bursts into his silence.
It is by his silence itself, suddenly, inexplicably revealing itself
to him as a word of great power, full of the voice of God."
MIKE: There are a few elderly ladies in our church who are constantly
looking for volunteers to spend an hour or two in adoration of the
Eucharist exposed in a monstrance in our church's side altar chapel.
I have been turning them down, because I felt more "at home" in the
comfort of my own home to contemplate. Should I be volunteering one
or two hours a week in church to sit with an empty mind in front of
the monstrance and the altar? If I bring a Merton book and read it
for an hour in the chapel, rather than sitting there with a blank
expression and empty mind -- does that cheapen the contemplation
experience?
A scientist wrote in the parish bulletin that he found many unexpected
blessings from participating in adoration, and he kept it up for two
years. Then he apparently decided it was a waste of time, or he had
better uses for his time, because he no longer participates. What
should I take from his experience?
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