Wednesday, September 23, 2009

WHY WE NEED ETERNITY?


There is never enough time ....
Missed opportunities.
Too many of them….
Funerals we couldn’t attend.
Conversations never finished
or much more significant:
conversations we should have had.
Lots of questions,
especially, “What ever happened
to what’s her or his name?”
Forgiveness – with an eventual end
to every “I’m sorry for ….” as well as
forgiving those who trespassed against us.
A chance for a zillion tears and laughs.
Healings. Many healings….
Surprises – that bring laughter
and many a big, “O my God!”
And then God - will it be
the big wedding banquet
with God at the big table
and on the dance floor
dressed quests galore
or will it be walks with God
in a garden
in the cool of the evening?
I'm dying to find out...
but not yet!



© Andy Costello, Reflections, 2009

Sunday, September 20, 2009


THE GEOGRAPHY OF THE SOUL

INTRODUCTION

The title of my homily is, “The Geography of the Soul.”

For some reason, today’s readings triggered that phrase, “The Geography of the Soul”. I said to myself, “What does that mean? Where did that come from?”

GEOGRAPHY

“G E” or “G E O” is the Greek word for “earth” – as in “geography,” “geometry,” “geoeconomics”, or “geodesic” and “GRAPHO” is the Greek word for “writing” as in “geography,” “photography” and “graphite”. Graphite - or lead – which people discovered could be used to wrote with. Pencils could be used besides pen and ink.

Geography – understanding where one is on the earth or the neighborhood. When we want to get from A to B – how do we get there? Even men ask for directions from time to time.

Geography – using word of mouth, maps, restaurant napkins, to tell someone or to jot down how to get from here to there. Can you draw me a map? Can you give me directions? Do you know what road to take?

With GPS we might be losing something. I’ve heard that.

The little baby begins in the dark inner globe of her mom. She kicks and pushes to learn how far her geography goes. Then as babies we look, point, crawl, stand up and begin to discover more and more of our geography: our home – our street – our yards – our playgrounds – our classrooms – and slowly the world.

How good were you in school with geography? Were you one of those kids that loved maps? How good are you in giving directions?

THE GEOGRAPHY OF THE SOUL

The title of my homily is, “The Geography of the Soul.” We know the geography of our bodies – our look – our scars – our wrinkles – our shape – healed bones that were broken – at times our left hip has a tiny tinge of an ache that is different than our right hip.

We know the geography of our bodies – male and female – tall, short, thin, fat, skin color, hair, no hair, cancer, operations. I have a piece of lead – in my finger here. It’s been here since the 4th grade when a boy in my class stabbed me in a pencil dueling fight. I lost.

What does our soul look like? Of course it’s invisible – but we know we have a soul – whether we call it a “soul” or not.

We know the difference between Jack our next door neighbor – who was just cutting his lawn two weeks ago or so – and four days later we were standing there at his body – in a casket at the funeral home. Same body – but so different dead than when alive.

The soul, life, his spirit, went out of him.

We have a soul, personality, spirit. Jack was so different than his wife, Jill, or his son who grew up with our son. We can be as different to each other as Annapolis is to Topeka, Kansas or to Paris, France.

That’s outside geography.

Inside we have our memories and our museums – our trophy cases and our toxic waste dumps – our photographs and our secrets – the fights and duels we won and the wars we lost.

And Jesus tells us that we have an inner room in here – in the geography of our soul – a holy place. And Jesus often comes to our door. He knocks on our door from time to time – because he likes to visit people.

Some people have never heard about their inner room – but everyone spends time in there. It’s the place where we talk to ourselves – which we’re doing all the time.

What does our inner room look like? I picture my small room with a small table that has an open bible on it – and a candle on it – and lots and lots of stuff in boxes along the walls. The chair has varied from time to time. Sometimes it’s a straight back wooden chair with no padding; other times it’s a Lazy Boy chair that is very comfortable.

What does your inner room look like?

What does your inner geography look like?

THE LETTER OF JAMES

How many times in our life have we said, “I want to read the Bible more”? Or “I want to read the Bible some day"?

If you haven’t done it yet – I mean more than opening up the book now and then and wondering as you read a few pages – and then you put it down for another ten years, I suggest you find your Bible and sitting in your inner room, read The Letter of James. Everyone has a Bible somewhere in the geography of their home.

The Bible is a library, a collection of books, one of which is entitled, “The Letter of James.”

Walk into the library called the Bible. Open up its doors. Walk towards the end of the book. It’s on the right side in our Bible. You’ll find it. You have a gist of the geography of the Bible.

The Letter of James been the second reading the past 3 Sundays. We have it today and we’ll have it again next week. James is great for taking us up and down and around the towns of our outer and inner geography. Today he begins with contrast. We know the difference between living in a great neighborhood and a dangerous neighborhood.

We have a choice to live and breathe jealousy, selfish ambition, disorder, foul practice. Or we can live and breathe purity, peace, gentleness, compliance, mercy and good fruits – not emitting inconstancy or insincerity.

We can let our property be ugly or we can get out our garden tools and cultivate the garden of our soul and grow peace.

It’s our move. It takes digging. It takes removing rocks. It takes time.

If you travel the geography of this earth, at different spots on the globe we’ll hear gun shots and see trucks blown up with I.E.D’s. If you walk through the geography of places of government and political power – as well as churches at times, you’ll hear anger and rancor.

James is saying you’ll see and hear it out there, but the real place to look – the real geography to check out - is in the geography of our soul.

Today he asks a question we all understand: “Where do the wars and where do the conflicts among you come from? Is it not from your passions that make war within your members? You covet but do not possess. You kill and envy but you cannot obtain; you fight and wage war. You do not possess because you do not ask. You ask but do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.”

He’s saying what Jesus said. “Go within!” We’ve all heard somewhere along the line Horace Greeley’s words, which he borrowed from John Babsone Lane Soul, “Go west, young man” James is borrowing from Jesus and telling us to “Go within.” Young, middle, old man, young, middle, old woman, go within.

Take the journey into your soul. Study the geography of your soul.

DANTE

If someone ever offers a course on Dante, take it.

He gives the geography of Hell, Purgatory and Heaven – and he puts people in all three – and we’ll see ourselves in the journey.

Before I die I hope some genius makes a movie - maybe even a trilogy on Dante’s Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. I would even take a musical, if someone put it together. I know T.S. Eliot dabbled in Dante, but there is a great big geography to unearth.

In the Inferno, Dante takes his readers into the geography of the soul. “Abandon hope all you who enter here.” But if we enter, and make the journey, we can come out of hell with hope. We’ll see rivers and boats, mountains and trails – and on the way we see the deadly side of the 7 deadly sins. We see parodies and parables on what each sin does.

He puts popes and political figures in the depths of hell. While he was writing and imagining his imaginings, I can picture him loving to have a copy of People magazine or a TV and clicker in hand.

If we discover the geography of Dante’s Inferno, we discover that lust and gluttony are small ravines and pits compared to horrible landscape of pride and cruelty and abuse. Hopefully, we want to keep moving through Purgatory into Paradise.

TWO SONS

I love stories that begin with: “A man had two sons!” A man had two sons: one son traveled the whole world and saw almost every country; the other son stayed home and worked in his backyard garden each day. Question: Who saw more?

CONCLUSION

If we don’t travel within, if we don’t take things to heart, if we don’t become conscious of our unconscious motivations and inner movements, envies, jealousies and desires, then we’ll keep on repeating the same old sins and same old stories and we’ll be in a hell of a geography for the rest of our lives.

But if we see ourselves as disciples of Jesus – on the journey with him – walking the same geography as him – we can grow with him.

As we heard in today’s gospel – his disciples are arguing about who’s the greatest – who’s the most important.

Then we’ll hear Jesus calling us inside the house – within. If we go within or bring him into our inner room, then we might start to get it. We might become like the little child again discovering the geography of life – and all its wonders – this time perhaps for the first time – and we’ll scream down in the inner geography our soul, “Jesus Christ, I get it. It’s a Divine Comedy. Thanks for the directions. Thanks.”