ARE YOU FOLLOWING THE ENIGMATIC PATH OF THE WAR?

Have you been following the machinations of all the wars? The ineffectual United Nations condemns Israel for the genocide of the Palestinians while the Russians systematically fire rockets at civilians with not a peep from anyone. Hypocrisy? In today’s market of competing power struggles, it is normative, not aberration. It is no wonder that, when I look at humanity as its proneness to power, lust, and prevarication, what makes me happy versus what might be right is that the underlying war is not one nation dominating another because they can, but because what is good and true must come from beyond the human Towel of Bable, called the United Nations, political platforms that mean nothing, or the absolute and brazen double standards of lies and truths to suit what humans want it to be. In short, humans are doing what comes naturally, based on three archetypal issues that have plagued humanity since Adam and Eve told God in the Garden of Eden, “The Devil made me do it.” That is a classic human response.

THREE ARCHETYPAL QUESTIONS THAT HUMANS MUST ANSWER

When I think about what atheists, agnostics, college professors, scientists, clergy, physicians, and both genders (whatever that is) and poets have in common, it is that all humanity is not born with what is true. We are all seekers. Each individual must probe the values and life experiences presented to them as the context or framework for answering three fundamental questions that humanity must address but often ignores because they have the wrong pieces of the puzzle that don’t fit, or they deny anything like this exists in the first place. Yet, the three fundamentals that face all humans are at the core of what it means to be rational and what makes us different from animals.

Different ideologies and political persuasions all claim that they have the answers to life but don’t know the three questions to ask, which must lessen the template that makes humanity cognizant of the next steps in their evolution. Humans can say YES or NO to anything they wish to place at the centers of their lives. They can put it there but must continue to keep it there, by choice. The default of human nature is to choose what our nature has evolved for humanity. The problem is that choice is an individual prerogative and we can do what is good for us or bad for us without fear of consequences from God, only from other humans.

Back in the heady days of my time at Indiana University, I took a course from the IU School of Business on operant conditioning as it pertains to how to manage people. I remember thinking how much I disliked B.F. Skinner’s approach to treating people is based on stimulus and responding to reward or punish behaviors that were deemed inappropriate. At this point in my life, I owe Dr. Skinner an apology, but with a caveat based on my increase in spirituality (capacitas dei). When I used the tool of dual citizenship to look at the total human condition of choices, I previously thought that humans made choices based on the freedom to make those choices. Now, I think that humans have a citizenship of the world (earth), which bases that choice on what I think gives me pain or pleasure at this moment. I don’t look to see the spiritual ramifications in this default of my human side. Where I have matriculated is to increase my view of reality to include the second of citizenships, that of the kingdom of heaven and adoption by God as heir to that kingdom. This kingdom begins with my Baptism and lasts forever. I don’t use behavior modification in this second dimension of my reality because, as St. Benedict says in his Rule, “Your way must not be like that of the world.” I embrace the opposite of my nature, only to find that, when dying to self, I come out with an awareness that what I had before, my humanity, has a deeper and more enduring evolutional stage than I had ever imagined, one that I term, “Intelligent Design.”

I bring all this up because I have only recently been aware that there are three questions all humans must confront, but there can be only one answer to each. This notion of dual citizenship and the tool of Teilhard de Chardin’s map (unattributed) plus looking at reality as physical, mental, and also spiritual universes, all one reality, yet three distinct movements existing simultaneously, provide me with a cursory but partial picture of reality. St. Paul calls it “seeing through a glass darkly.”

My life as it ponders heaven through a glass darkly.

In the crucible of my life, where I grind up both the new and old wine together to seek God each day, I can only find the answers to the longing of my heart by totally giving up my will (kenosis of Philippians 2:5-12) to embrace what, to others seem like a fairy tale. And what a tale it is. I am not suggesting a one-time abandonment of my will to the Father through Christ via the power of the Holy Spirit, as in my conversion when I became aware that Jesus is Lord and Savior, both happen DAILY because I exist in the condition of humanity that defaults to my human self alone without my deeper evolution as adopted son (daughter) of the Father. This could all be so theoretical for me if all it was was a one-time flush of piety, here and gone leaving me with the smug feeling that I am correct and everyone else is a fool, but it is a way of life, a Lay Cistercian Way, a way where I try to convert my way to Christ’s Way.

As I sit each day on my couch in the upper room of my inner self, I wait, without agenda, trying to shed my thoughts of the world to be open to what Jesus radiates from His heart to my heart. It is in this context that I am presented with the three questions each human must ask and answer correctly. It is using my dual citizenship to open up my mind (knowledge), to love as much as I am capable (capacitas dei), and fulfill what it means to be human in the intended completion of my nature.

What does it mean to be fully human? I am in the process on this earth of discovering what my nature intended before the Fall. I do this, not with my own energy but by denying myself and opening my heart to the possibility of all I encountered that day.

What does it mean to love fiercely? Fierce love means you sell all you have to obtain a treasure you found and don’t want to love. In the silence and solitude of my heart, this love is being aware that God first loved me so that I even know what love is. Love is sacrifice and abandonment of all THINGS in favor of what the world sees as foolish and the Jews think is folly. Love is service to others as the Father (pure knowledge) loves the Son (pure love), and together that love produces pure energy (service). This is the model Christ came to give us and, more importantly, show us through giving up His life for the ransom of many. I long to have this as my center. It takes work, each way, to be aware that I am aware of Christ.

What is truth? I learned somewhere, in the cobwebs of my past experiences, that truth is the adequation of the mind with reality. Like a chicken who seeks food from the dirt, I can only peck here and there as to what that means. I don’t worry about truth because human truth is always tainted with the imperfection of human nature. Think not? Just listen to the nightly news and the comical claims of nations and their politicians that they are true when your mind does flip-flops over how hypocritical they are. Human truth is subjective, and subject to change. Absolute truth comes only from God absolutely. There is no change, there is no height or depth. Humans can only approach this truth with the help of Jesus (both divine and human in nature). We are present to it through, with, and in Christ, and the extension of the Body of Christ (the Church). I don’t place myself in the presence of truth, when I do Lectio Divina or share Eucharist with others, and think that I come away with secrets only the Holy Spirit gave to me alone. Truth comes in my constant and consistent act of humility and obedience where I purposefully offer my life for others and seek only “…to dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life.”

I am in a battle, a constant war of my humanity with my human instincts to move beyond my present reality to that of a fulfillment of what I am supposed to become. Rather than the natural help of evolution, it takes intelligent progress and my personal YES to make the jump from my humanity to the next step in my evolution, one intended by God but was shortcut by Adam and Eve.

My Cistercian Way (www.trappist.net) allows me to take the hypotheses above and make them real as part of how I approach people, events, and the totality of all beings I encounter.

I can’t thank God enough, if fact it is only with, through, and in Christ, with the power of the Holy Spirit that we, together, can approach the Father in the Eucharistic and other Cistercian practices and charisms, and say:

Glory be to the Father, to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, now and forever. The God who is, who was, and who is to come at the end of the ages.