I write, speak, invest, network, and question to stimulate fruitful conversation. Let's talk about human flourishing! It begins with freedom. Holy leisure is the key to human being, freedom and generativity. Please join me in the adventure of realizing Christ!
If I present myself to you as a human person with emotional vulnerability and a claim to your attention, your honor, your gratitude, your response, I am perceived as being needy or demanding, or as trying to make you uncomfortable. The demand you feel, the pressure to respond with due consideration, is not of my making.
My free act of communication, invitation, gift, is free to the extent I am free of any demand, or unattached to any expectation for results. But the origin of a truly free act is outside the plane of mere action, gesture, information, or exchange. It is this Source whose image you have a duty to honor, Who places you under the obligation of freedom.
The highest freedom is the capacity to freely do what you must, what you should. The forms and courtesies by which we guard the holy ground of encounter with human beings made in the image – to veil and so to reveal – God are not empty, old formalities, or meaningless human conventions. They are, at their best, deeply rooted in the highest reality and so generative of the greatest freedom.
By the free and conscious act of courtesy, we may fill a simple human form with the glory of God and help to reweave the context of human being. Free gift means ‘no strings attached,’ but in freedom you discover that all strings attach to Gift.
Here is a passage from Stratford Caldecott’s Beauty for Truth’s Sake. My heart sang when I read it, feeling that finally, someone understood what I knew to be true about our obligations to one another to refill the emptied signs and forms all around us. I wrote to thank him for his book, and though he had begun the journey of ‘dying of cancer,’ he stopped on the way to write back and to encourage me again in my own work. Not only did he write these words, he lived them:
The elemental courtesies of conventional etiquette and good manners are the vital channels for preserving this spirit in everyday life. …an education that actively cultivates such modes of behavior will begin the process of building a society that is liturgical to its very core, in which the ‘air’ of grace can circulate. Harmony of soul can only be restored through effort, and the restoration of manners and kindness is an important beginning. Without it, little else is possible.
I know that my presence, my vulnerability and neediness, my pain, and even my free gifts to you may make you feel uncomfortably obliged. Please know that my intention is to be an invitation to freedom so as to delight in sharing the Great Dance of freedom with you.
Like the aligned lenses on a microscope, which boost its seeing power, devotion to Mary magnifies Christ to me. Her perfect alignment and transparency do not obscure Him, but as Scripture teaches, magnify Him. 
I want my soul, also, to “magnify the Lord” to the world around me. I need to work on that transparency and alignment. Mother Mary offers lessons in her little ‘home school,’ so I’m moving in that direction!
I can be in unity with anyone, at some remove. Perhaps I’m not your cup of tea, or we just don’t sync well, or you’re just ‘not that into’ me, or a little bit goes a long way in our relationship. It may just not be our time yet. We both will continue to grow and change, and maybe the Great Dance will find us, someday, back in phase for a few steps. Or maybe not.
Ultimately, in the kairos of the Eternal present, we’ll reconnect. Meanwhile, we are held in the Spirit’s tether – his net of relationship. It’s a dynamic tension that generates a context between us – a space that we (or even just one of us, with the Spirit’s help) can fill with love.
In the comedy movie Hallalujah Trail, one character tries to keep step with others surreptitiously. The name he gives this maneuver is “maintaining detached contact,” and it’s what I love to do when I feel you’ve dumped me, abandoned me, blown me off, ignored me, or otherwise let go of our unity.
I know from experience that I don’t need your cooperation to hold you in my heart, to fill the space between us with love, to let my yearning for you become a prayer, to offer the pain of separation for your blessing.
If I’m maintaining detached contact with you, watch out! The Spirit is ever at work drawing us closer. One of these days, you may be surprised to find yourself wanting to see me, write to me, touch base with me, or remembering me fondly. I wish you well, and look forward to our reunion.
Prodigality has two meanings:to fritter away your riches and to give generously of them.
The Father of the Prodigal Son actually exhibited prodigality that pours itself out to provide. The Son fulfills that generous impulse in both the abandoned (if impudent and imprudent) spending, and in the trust implicit in showing up at his door empty handed.
I want, in a sense, to show up at my heavenly Father’s door ‘empty-handed’. I hope to be purged of my pickiness, crochetiness, self-centered-ness, defensiveness and pusillanimity, among other things. These are all problematic for anyone, but are especially nasty in old people. We don’t suddenly acquire the qualities, but they show up more in old-age ‘relief’. I want to let go of all that I carry, all that I’m attached to, all that impedes my opening to receive Him.
The Prodigal and his older brother both had lessons to learn. One refused to own the greatness of his Father’s house and move its riches generously into celebration and licit enjoyment. The other abstracted money from its context in home, community, and responsibility, to ‘move’ it impotently. Whether merely spilled, or merely saved, money (as token of the Father’s character and intentions) is useless.
The word ‘prodigal’ came up in a writing group recently – focus for an off-the-cuff 5-minute writing flow exercise. Here’s my take:
He gave it all away, yes…squandered it, maybe…lost it, no – because in the waste was the wielding of what was his. In the prodigality was the essence of the Father’s generosity. In the life with the poor and lowly was the movement of the Father’s heart: out, through his son, beyond the bounds of place and property, his yearning, his watchfulness, his hope filing the newly enlarged space between the sonship of pure love and the sonship of pure law; of begetting and begging; of justice and mercy. In that space between the Father who gave all and the son who spent all was a world of hurt and need, now reunited in one embrace to Comfort and Fulfillment!
Oh, long-suffering son of the house, how the Father longs for you to know the joy of prodigality!
It might seem hostile to pepper a live atheist with so many questions, but these are things I’d really like to know:
If you substitute your religion for ‘atheist’ in each question, then answer them all, it will be good for you and for our future dialogue! Here’s a contact form in case you want to share your answers with me. I’d be honored!
A mom is the caretaker of a huge, wonderful, potentially beautiful, critically important place! She, herself, this actual, unique person, is the single most important ‘environment’ in the lives of her children. Like Mary, like the Church, she is an atmosphere. She is an atmosphere of affection. This is not just warm, fuzzy feelings, but […]
This is my most-requested audio – about how we can educate our children well, despite our own inadequacies. The Problem – We must get kids from where they are, to where they need to be; from ‘uneducated’ to ‘educated’. Given the poverty of our own education, we feel asked to do the impossible: build a […]
Some audiences want to cut right to the chase: “Give us practical applications of all your ideas about Sabbath-keeping.” OK – here you go: In this talk I do just that – give concrete, practical ways to dip into the kind of leisure that brings interior equanimity and leaves you more whole, more human, more […]
I prepared this talk for the Heart of a Woman group, in Kansas City, shortly after the suicide of a Catholic mother of ten. It was a shock to me, but not entirely unexpected, as I had known her during the years she struggled with depression and disintegration, despite her devotion to the Church, Christ, […]
For an Apostles of the Interior Life Women’s Retreat, where the theme was “The King Desires Your Beauty,” I prepared this truly interesting talk. Will you believe me when I say that this is another of my favorites?!?! I know, I’ve said that about a lot of these talks, but revisiting them to give a […]
I once asked a friend who calls herself a Jewish-Catholic if it had been hard for her to accept Mary’s role in Salvation History. She laughed and said, “Heck no! Every Sabbath was begun by a Jewish mama’s prayers! I’d have been suspicious if Lord Sabbaoth hadn’t come through a woman.” Jewish women welcomed Sabbath […]
In “Stour Valley and Dedham Church” Constable has painted the Vale of Dedham – a familiar and beloved area of his native England.
“The Merry Drinker,” by Frans Hals This is a portrait of an unnamed man, called in the title only ‘a merry drinker’.
Giotto’s painting, The Wedding Feast at Cana, portrays the literal and spiritual senses of this story.
Berlinghieri’s St. Francis appears behind the altar of San Francesco in Pescia, Italy. It is an excellent example of art ordered to divine worship.
A mom is the caretaker of a huge, wonderful, potentially beautiful, critically important place! She, herself, this actual, unique person, is the single most important ‘environment’ in the lives of her children. Like Mary, like the Church, she is an atmosphere. She is an atmosphere of affection. This is not just warm, fuzzy feelings, but […]
This is my most-requested audio – about how we can educate our children well, despite our own inadequacies. The Problem – We must get kids from where they are, to where they need to be; from ‘uneducated’ to ‘educated’. Given the poverty of our own education, we feel asked to do the impossible: build a […]
I once asked a friend who calls herself a Jewish-Catholic if it had been hard for her to accept Mary’s role in Salvation History. She laughed and said, “Heck no! Every Sabbath was begun by a Jewish mama’s prayers! I’d have been suspicious if Lord Sabbaoth hadn’t come through a woman.” Jewish women welcomed Sabbath […]
Benedictine College hosted a Symposium for Advancing the New Evangelization in 2014. The theme was Transcendentals as Preambles to Faith, and I got to propose my take on that as a paper. Anyone who knows me could probably have bet good money I’d do something ‘three dimensional’ with that, and they’d have won those bets. […]
