Tag: Purpose

Orphaned

I was sixty years old when I became an orphan! That’s the year my mother died, my father having died the year before.
   I know, I know—it sounds ridiculous. I wasn’t a relatively helpless small child, but a grown man and a middle-aged one to boot.
   Yet there was a certain truth to it. Those who gave me life, whose love and care nurtured and guided my life, whose presence anchored my life, were gone, leaving me behind.
   It marked a fundamental change in my life. It’s hard to explain, but it made me more aware of the reality of my own limitations, of the prospect of my own death someday, sooner or later.
   Not having my parents alive anymore, that final separation, seemed to be a last step in in the gradual process of becoming a fully independent adult.
   Don’t get me wrong. I don’t mean to sound morbid, nor am I. But, it definitely marked a significant change in my self-identity and life.
   As adults, we may at times disagree with our parents, make life decisions against their counsel and concerns, but somehow, in some way, we still remain anchored in them and, hopefully, receive support and guidance from them as best they can, no matter the consequences of our sometimes stubborn and ill-advised choices.
   It was through them that we first learned to trust and love God. God seemed to be the ideal fullness and perfection of the love and acceptance that, hopefully, we experienced from our parents, no matter their limitations.
   When Jesus’ disciples asked him to teach them how best to pray, ignoring the so many formal and traditional titles of God treasured and counseled over the centuries, he told them to think of their relation to God as a child to parents and say:
   “Our Father, who art in heaven . . .”

   Ha!, the unbeliever might mockingly say, clearly a case of substituting for a lost parental relationship by imagining an all-knowing, all-powerful father figure.
   Yes, that is a possibility; it could be true—but just because something could be true doesn’t mean that it has to be true.
   It doesn’t require experiencing the death of both parents—or others who have affectionately and perseveringly loved us, almost as a parent—to think of God in those terms.
   God is the model, the epitome for all parents and parental relationships. As creator, God is the ultimate source and sustainer of all life and living things.
   Total separation from and the loss of parents is imaginable and also inevitable. Total separation from and the loss of our creator is unimaginable and illogical, a contradiction in terms.
   It’s not so much that we’re projecting parenthood onto God; it’s the other way around. Parenting and parental care and love are a participation, a collaboration in the life-giving and sustaining love of our creator.
   “I will not leave you orphans,” Jesus assured his disciples the night before he died, “I will come to you.
   “In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me, because I live and you will live. On that day you will realize that I am in my Father and you are in me and I in you.
   “Whoever has my commandments and observes them is the one who loves me. And whoever loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and reveal myself to him.”       (Jn 14:18-21)


5 June 2022

West Point Seminaries

The seminary of the New York Archdiocese, St. Joseph’s Seminary, is located in the Dunwoodie neighborhood of the City of Yonkers; hence it’s nickname, Dunwoodie.
   Established in 1896, it had once been referred to as the West Point of seminaries. West Point, being, of course, where the United States Military Academy was located.
   What would a seminary be like if it was really modeled after West Point?
   These thoughts danced through my head during a recent visit to the West Point Visitors Center with its striking exhibitions about the Military Academy’s history, contemporary status, and what in a seminary might be called its “spirituality”.
   The exhibition area proudly displayed the mission statement of the academy:

To educate, train, and inspire the Corps of Cadets so that each graduate is a commissioned leader of character committed to the values of Duty, Honor, Country and prepared for a career of professional excellence and service to the Nation as an officer in the United States Army.

   Change a few words, and it could serve as a mission statement for a seminary too, since the seminary also is meant to be a place where (the church’s) “officer corps” are educated, trained, and inspired.
   The seminary graduate also is commissioned (ordained) as a leader of character committed to the values of Duty, Honor, Church and prepared for a career of professional excellence and service to his Diocese, Eparchy, or Order.
   In the Military Academy, the student body is not like that of other colleges; it is referred to and treated as a “Corps of Cadets”. The cadets are educated, trained, and inspired as a collaborative group, not as elite individuals.

   This means that shared responsibility and teamwork characterize every aspect of their experience. Like the Military Academy, the seminary is not meant to be a place for individuals to pursue their personal and individual goals and advancement.
   The cadet experience includes the equivalent of military basic training and more, since their training continues over the course of four years.
   Although seminaries usually do not have physical training as such, they traditionally had some rigorous demands and discipline with a tightly scheduled day that included when to arise, meditate, pray, eat, attend class, study, recreate, speak or be silent, be indoors or outdoors, and sleep.
   The defining values of Duty, Honor, Country that are esteemed at West Point are its strength. The academy trains and tests men and women for leadership.
   The seminary’s traditional strength usually has been more quality philosophical and theological education and less its developing of “esprit de corps”.
   Training for leadership in country or church is not like running for office. It involves subordinating one’s personal desires and advancement to the common good, seeking to serve, not to be served.
   However this doesn’t mean unthinkingly conforming and blind obedience. Professional excellence involves critical thinking and honest communication as well.
   The West Point Visitors Center and nearby Museum exhibitions trace the history and development of the academy and even such things as the nature of warfare itself. They effectively explain, educate, and inspire.
   West Point is a good model for a seminary!


26 September 2021

           

Look Where You’re Going!

Look out! Look ahead! Look back! Look what you did! Look lively! Look what you’re leaving behind! Look what’s in front of you!
   There are so many “looks” in our lives that there’s no possibility of doing all of them, but we to tend to favor one or another direction.
   Getting older, the temptation may be to indulge in a lot of looking back. It can be kind of negative if it’s a matter of bewailing the past. “I used to be able to …” or “I wish I could … again” or “Things used to be so great a long time ago”.
   On the other hand, it can be very positive, when we recall with pleasure, joy, gratitude, and thanksgiving the wonderful experiences or blessings we’ve enjoyed over the course of our lives.
   But, even getting older, we still are challenged to and need to look ahead. How sad it is to fear tomorrow and to do our best to keep our head in the sand.
   If we are living a life of faith, we have great expectations and even an impatient yearning for the future. Alas for us, if we can’t see anything ahead of us and have closed eyes and no hopes for tomorrow.
   Looking back from time to time to celebrate happy events, accomplishments, and achievements is only natural and a source of satisfaction and happiness—but it’s no excuse for not looking ahead.
   If we live, we are in forward motion. It’s shear folly to close our eyes and grit our teeth like one with no future at all. Look around all you want, but no matter what, don’t forget to look ahead!
   If you can’t see anything on your own when you try to look ahead, look for someone who can see to guide you on your way, dog or human!
   And, of course, it goes without saying that asking for help from the One who always knows the way forward ensures making headway in spite of all our limitations.

   Be careful not to confuse looking ahead with knowing what’s ahead. Looking ahead is a matter of hope and discerning our direction—but we don’t actually entirely know what’s ahead of us until we get there.
   Not looking ahead means we’re abandoning responsibility for our own future. We’re not bothering to try to control the course of our lives, we’re simply drifting and passively accepting whatever transpires.
   Each of us is a free agent. We’re free to speculate, imagine, seek, set goals, work to achieve them or just drift through life or allow our course to be set or influenced by others and their decisions.
   We all once lived like this, at least for a while. It’s called infancy or early childhood and was appropriate for a brief period many years ago, but not anymore.
   We’re not a 007, licensed to kill, but we are accredited by God, licensed to live. If we deliberately stunt our growth, if we bind ourselves tightly with behaviors that prevent us from developing, if we pretend that one stage of our lives was the best and only one and cling to it dearly, we are opting for blindness, deafness, immobility, and dying.

   O Lord, you have probed me and you know me; you know when I sit and when I stand; you understand my thoughts from afar.
   My journeys and my rest you scrutinize, with all my ways you are familiar…
   Where can I go from your spirit? From your presence, where I can flee?…
   If I take the winds of the dawn, if I settle at the farthest limits of the sea,
   Even there your hand shall guide me, and your right hand hold me fast.
   (Psalm 139:1-3,7,9-10)

8 August 2021

Master Class

None of us lives as his own master and none of us dies as his own master. While we live we are responsible to the Lord, and when we die we die as his servants. Both in life and death we are the Lord’s. (Romans 14:7-8)

   A short reading for Morning Prayer began with these few words. They always stir my heart and provoke my thinking no matter how many times I see or hear them.
   Whether we agree with them or not is radically decisive about the course of our lives, the structure of our values, and all our expectations for the future.
   They are a brief statement of our essential identity. We’re not self-made, we’re not a mere byproduct of an act of love or passion, we’re not anything we may wish to be
   We are created—and even though we may yearn or feel free to be and do whatever we wish, this contradicts our essential structure and design. If that is how we try to live our lives, we don’t know who and what we are, and we are not realizing the fulness of our true potential.
   One way or another, we all, at least from time to time, are engaged in the search for meaning. for the purpose, direction, and destiny of our lives.
   The quest can be uncomfortable, frightening, or dismaying as we try to look ahead, depending on what we see or don’t see. But, we must be who and what we are, and we are limited in what we can do or achieve.
   It’s not necessarily a grim or sad story. The quest for meaning can lead us to begin to perceive our limitations not so much as personal failures or lack of success as part of our essence and design.
   It seems illogical that the complex reality of a living human person could be merely a result of a long-term process of gradual or abrupt random changes and mutations.

   Also, it seems logical that the effect must somehow have a cause that is at least equal to or greater than the effect itself.
   In other words, the quest for meaning can lead to something greater than ourselves and beyond our full understanding—as is the very universe itself.
   In our less religious age we recourse to sometimes trendy, but ultimately almost unintelligible words and concepts like, e.g., the Big Bang theory. In earlier ages unknown forces and powers were conceived of as the work of superior beings, divinities.
   In the Jewish-Christian-Muslim traditions, this gradually led to the realization and belief that this inevitably demanded an ultimate power, a supreme divinity.
   That’s what we have come to mean by God. Greater than anything or anyone other, more powerful than any other power, more understanding, compassionate, generous, merciful, and loving.
   And this is not merely a kind of philosophical theory or theological speculation. It has gradually emerged in the traditions and development of the world’s great religions. It’s shared human patrimony is not to be underestimated.
   When Paul wrote his letter to the Judeo-Christian community of imperial Rome, he used a good word to summarize all this quest for meaning and purpose, “Master”.
   Notice he didn’t say God is the Master of everyone, starting with the most difficult and demanding concept of all, “God”. He simply stated the obvious and logical to him, the common human experience: None of us lives as his own master and none of us dies as his own master.
   And, this great truth has consequences!


9 May 2021

Can’t See the Forest for the Trees

This is an expression that we may use to describe someone who is so deeply involved in the details of something that they lose sight of the overall, the big picture.
   The movie, “The Bridge on the River Kwai”, was a great example of this. British soldiers are in a WWII Japanese prison camp. For the sake of their physical health and overall morale, their commanding officer leads them in constructing a bridge over the nearby river, demanded by the Japanese camp commander.
   When the completed bridge is targeted for destruction by the British army, the prisoners’ commander, so deeply committed to the success of his project, blindly tries to impede the British action.
   Losing sight of the forest because of the trees is always a danger for anyone, especially responsible, thorough, and thoughtful people. One can get so absorbed in the details of some construction, task, investigation, or analysis that it’s easy to lose sight of the overall goal—or even impede it.
   “The perfect is the enemy of the good.” We shouldn’t get so immersed in what we are doing that we lose track of our overall goal. There’s only so much time, opportunity, and resources available to us.
Don’t spend so much time packing carefully that you miss the vacation flight!
   There is a high degree of specialization in the field of medical care. There can be doctors who are so highly skilled in some very specialized medical fields that they almost lose sight of overall threats to the health, wellbeing, and life obligations of their patient.
   This can happen in all fields, not just the medical. With all due respect, it seems to me that something similar sometimes happens in the religious field as well—to preachers, writers, theologians, biblical scholars, canonists, historians, and those with special ecclesiastical responsibilities.

   Generally in the Eastern churches, the cross as a symbol of victory is often a golden or even bejeweled emblem. In the Western church, it is usually the crucifix, the cross with the tortured body of Jesus affixed.
   During the Easter Triduum, we remember and celebrate in great detail—the passion narrative—the final few days and hours of Jesus’s life. Sometimes it seems that we’re so celebrating the details of the price he paid that we almost neglect why and for what purpose he paid the price.
   Jesus didn’t seek or want to suffer or to die. Remember his prayer in the agony of the garden. He only sought to do the Father’s will, no matter what the cost.
   Your goal and mine is not to be crucified, or to suffer, or to live a sacrificial life. Our goal is to live, to love, to serve, to celebrate and give thanks for the wonder of God’s works, and above all, as Jesus, to seek to do God’s will—no matter what, nor what the cost.
   To become so fascinated, to empathize so deeply with the details of the price he paid can—not necessarily but may—distract us from his overall purpose. Even in this, we can lose sight of the forest because of the trees!
   In our rapidly changing and divided and contesting world, we may become so comfortable, engaged, and defensive of certain concerns, values, customs, procedures, persons or institutions, that we may be in danger of losing sight of the overall goal or purpose that they once and may or may not still help us attain.
   The harder you work, the greater sacrifice you make, the more responsible you may be—beware of not seeing the forest!


25 April 2021

Cursing the Darkness

Better to light one candle
than to curse the darkness.

It seems, considering how we invest our time, energy, and attention, that we have become inordinately absorbed in cursing the darkness!
First, let’s be clear what we’re talking about. “Darkness” refers to the absence or lack of light; by extension and metaphorically it alludes to wicked or evil beings that inhabit or are associated with it.
Second, let’s be clear about the attention we give to darkness.
– Although we want light, we’re not being inundated by candle-lighters or overwhelmed by the light they’re shedding. But we do try to educate potential candle-lighters about the depth and extent and danger of the darkness.
– That’s what prompts us to condemn the darkness. We want to persuade people that, even in spite of certain advantages and satisfactions of the darkness, it’s not good. So, we try to heighten their awareness of the undesirable consequences of the darkness.
– But, to motivate cursing the darkness, we really have to reveal the darkness in its depth. We have to call attention to its vastness, its origin, and its seemingly rapid expansion. We have to dramatically illustrate its deceptive worth and value. We have to announce the dark dangers daily.
What happens! Often we end up becoming absorbed by the darkness and its effects, by the absence of light.
Look at the entertainment sector: audiences are thrilled by films that exceed one another in shockingly vivid depictions of death, destruction, and violence.
Look at the religious sector: church goers sometimes are titillated by exhortations to righteousness and virtue that dramatically describe the consequences of their absence—sins and their enormity.

Look at the political sector: citizens are ceaselessly informed about the scope and significance and failings of the “other”, so as to muster support for the “right” side.
If we’re often hearing and speaking of the darkness, its extent, and the achievements of darkness dwellers, we may not be doing a great job of spreading the light.
There are always spots of light amid the darkness, like stars in the night sky. Do we see them as spoilers of the darkness, or as harbingers of the beauty of the light?
In over-educating people about the achievements, pleasures and dangers of the darkness, we may be blinding them to the power and glory of the light.
To be a force for light, we need to be aware of the darkness, but not to curse and denounce it in such exquisite detail that in effect we become its promoters.
To be a force for light, don’t forget that the most important thing is to light and keep burning the candle of our lives—even one spot in the night can encourage others to shine their little light as well.
To be a force for light, we should learn from the current pandemic. One tiny virus so multiplies that it is interfering with human life on earth, causing more death than many a war, radically affecting and altering the behavior of almost everyone.
Your priority is to light your candle, which instantly dispels nearby darkness and can become a very contagious behavior—each candle-lighter encouraging another.
Remember Paul’s plea to the Ephesians: “…you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light, for light produces every kind of goodness and righteousness and truth…”


7 March 2021

Backstage

It’s only human to be curious.
After seeing a great performance—play, concert, dance—sometimes we really want to see the performer—the actor, musician, dancer, to see who he/she really is. We’re so impressed we want to learn more about the person who did such a great job.
The performance, of course, reveals a little about the performer, but only a little . . .
– every tweet reveals something about the tweeter.
– every speech reveals something about the speaker.
– every painting reveals something about the painter.
– every building reveals something about the architect.
– every lie reveals something about the liar.
– every loving act reveals something about the lover.
– every torture reveals something about the torturer.
No matter what, we never learn everything; in a way, everyone is ultimately a mystery.
As we see the cosmos, the whole universe, the earth, and all it contains, it reveals a little about their source, their origin, their maker, but only a little.
Overwhelmed by the vastness, the power, the energy, the complexity, and the beauty of it all, we want to learn more about their creation and their creator [or Supreme Being, Source, Maker, Begetter, Father, Mother, Parent—the names vary].
We don’t even know what we want to know! It’s like an insatiable hunger, and, no matter what we discover, we yearn for more.
St. Augustine of Hippo got it right when he said, “Fecisti nos ad te, Domine, et inquietum est cor nostrum donec requiescat in te.” (“Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee.”)

Notice Augustine said that it is our heart that is yearning, not our head.
Of course our head is yearning, too. We can’t help the restless questing to know, to understand, to comprehend, that is built into our very essence and being.
But the yearning of our hearts has a different dynamic. We can be constantly overwhelmed by beauty and wonderment, and the gratefulness and joy that they inspire. This, too, is built into our very essence and being.
It’s not that we are made for endless unfulfillment, never to know or to possess all, but the very opposite—never-ending fulfillment, never-ending finding, discovering, wonderment, gladness, and gratitude.
You know, the old Baltimore Catechism was right on target with its third question and answer. They really captured the essence of Augustine’s beautiful reflection:
Q. Why did God make you? A. God made me to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him for ever in heaven.
However, the answer adds an important third purpose. The way we’re made, we can’t help but restlessly to seek to know more and more; we can’t help but to love and desire more and more . . .
But, it doesn’t work quite the same in the case of “to serve Him”. We do have some built-in desire for doing what is right, to do the will of God—but it’s weaker than “to know Him, to love Him”.
Beware the temptation! Remember what Jesus quoted, “The Lord, your God, shall you worship and him alone shall you serve.”


4 October 2020

Going Round in Circles

Usually when we say that somebody is “going round in circles” we mean that they keep coming back to the same place or problem where they started, that they’re not making progress or achieving anything.
Actually, in terms of motion, we’re all going round in circles all the time:
– Everyone on the surface of the rotating earth is constantly going around about 1,000 miles per hour, since the circumference of the earth is somewhat over 24,000 miles.
– The whole earth and everyone on it is spinning around the sun at a rate of about 67,000 miles per hour.
– The entire solar system is moving around the galaxy center at a speed well over 500,000 miles per hour.
We’re part of a very fast crowd!
In terms of the course of our lives, we tend also to be going round in circles much of the time, often living aimlessly with little or no sense of destination or destiny.
The older we are, the more conscious we become of the speed of each of our lives—and the imminence of their end, of death.
There’s a lovely—and striking—question in The Liturgy of the Hours (Week II, Monday, Morning Prayer, Antiphon 1): “When will I come to the end of my pilgrimage and enter the presence of God?”
It’s an interesting and challenging way of describing the course of one’s life—as a pilgrimage!
A pilgrimage usually means a demanding journey, usually a long trip, to a special place, often a foreign and/or sacred place—and, of course, the journey has a purpose.
We undertake a pilgrimage in spite of its hardships, difficulties, and dangers because of our keen desire to attain its goal, to reach our destination.
As wayfarers, travelers, pilgrims, we don’t fear the end of our journey, we don’t lament that the trip will be over—we yearn to reach it, to attain our goal.

Going round in circles isn’t necessarily wasteful. If we’re going up a spiral staircase, though we’re going round in circles we’re also making progress, getting higher every time around.
Going round in circles is a fundamental aspect of our lives. But, without a purpose, goal, or destination, without progress, achievement, or attainment, our lives can be empty and terrifyingly meaningless.
For some people, a question like, “When will I come to the end of my pilgrimage and enter the presence of God?,” is nothing more than senseless “religious talk.”
In reality, it’s a profound way of describing our lives. We may not fully realize its implications, but it does give some purpose, power, and fulfillment to us, we ever-circling, fast-moving human creatures.
Life isn’t a merry-go-round. We don’t just enjoy the ride until it’s over. In fact, the ride isn’t necessarily always enjoyable.
Life isn’t a boomerang journey. We’re not just thrown around, traveling long and far, and end up spent and exhausted pretty much not far from where we started.
Life isn’t a train ride that never ends; we’re not wanderers without a station where we get off; we have a place to go to and a hope for tomorrow.
If life’s a pilgrimage with its mysterious destination, “the presence of God,” then why we aren’t we preparing for the journey?
Why are we encumbered by useless things, why aren’t we traveling light, why aren’t we on our guard against detours and blockages?
It’s okay to be going round in circles so long as we’re spiraling, so long as, no matter how convoluted the route of our lives, we’re progressing towards our final destination.

(Available in Spanish translation)

9 August 2020

In Him We Live . . .

In St. Paul’s speech at the Aeropagus, he spoke of “The God who made the world and all that is in it . . . he who gives to everyone life and breath and everything . . . he is not far from any one of us . . .” And he added, quoting, probably, Epimenides of Kenossos, “For In him we live and move and have our being . . .” (Acts 17: 24-28)
These ten words express very simply what philosophers over the centuries have been wrestling with and trying to understand, the marvel and the mystery of existence, of everything and everyone.
Existence is not a kind of historical event but an on-going, dynamic reality. We exist, not because God at one point in time did create us, but because our very continuing to exist is due to the continuing creating, sustaining power and action of God—what can be described as his love
Although some would dispute it, this is actually not a personal belief or an act of faith, the trusting acceptance of someone else’s testimony, witness, or teaching—it is a fact, a fundamental reality.
Whether we say “God” or “Higher Power” or use any other word or concept to explain it, the fact that everything and everyone are existing requires a currently operative cause greater than any and all of its effects.
As Mr. Spock of Star Trek might say, this is logical. It’s not a matter of opinion but of knowledge. Just because I cannot see ultraviolet or infrared radiation does not mean they don’t exist—but it does mean my vision has limitations.
The knowledge and awareness of the dynamic reality of existence has some equally logical implications:
To want or try to terminate our own existence or that of any other is, in effect, to want or try to thwart the action and will of God—alas, Hamlet, but “To be or not to be” is not our question to decide.

– Whether we know or are aware of it or not, we are inseparable from God; we remain connected no matter what we may think, desire, say, or do—“sin” and “evil” are not quite so powerful as we may think.
– Human growth, maturation, and development necessarily involve our discernment of the ongoing designs of our creator and our fidelity to and harmony with them —I can’t “gotta be me” all by myself.
– Since we are of God and in God, everything about our existence is essentially good and is only made less so because of our own choices and decisions—it’s a cop-out to claim, “The devil made me do it.”
– Deviations from the divine plan because of our ignorance are understandable—only God is perfect—but deviations because of our willfulness are short-sighted, stupid, and self-destructive—they’re “My bad.”
– Joy, gladness, celebration, and thanksgiving are the most appropriate reactions to our awareness that “In him we live and move and have our being.”
In 1974, an interesting science-fiction teleplay was shown on TV, “The Questor Tapes.” It was about a scientist who was planning to create an android called Questor but never completed his work. His interns, following his written instructions, assembled the android and activated it with memory tapes that he had left them, but some were damaged. Questor realized that he lacked some essential knowledge, the purpose of his existence, and had to seek it.
The story is a provocative, moving parable about everyone’s quest for this same essential knowledge, the meaning and purpose of his or her own existence.


21 July 2019

Disoriented

Where I live, “uptown” means northward and “downtown” means southward. Maybe it’s because of the nearby river that flows from north to south — or maybe it has to do with looking at a map, where north is at the top and south at the bottom.
In Egypt, “up” definitely relates to a river. Since the Nile flows south to north, upper Egypt is south and lower Egypt, north.
In many ancient maps, east was at the top and west was at the bottom. To get one’s bearings was described as getting oriented — i.e., figuring which way was east.
Whichever way maps are “oriented” they tend to deceive. They always distort reality one way or another. Generally, maps are two-dimensional — but the world isn’t.
Remember the traditional Mercator projection used in mapmaking? The further north or south, the larger everything became; Greenland always seemed enormous.
And, if you saw a polar-type projection, what a surprise! Northern Norway is a lot closer to northern Alaska than you might have thought.
Airplane travelers are used to watching flight maps, where long routes always seem curved. That’s because the world is spherical and the shortest distance on the surface of a sphere can’t be a straight line. The moment you look at a world globe, it’s perfectly clear and obvious.
We take all this for granted, but, it seems this was pretty innovative stuff at the time of Columbus — although the ancient Greeks knew it well.
The moral of the story is you’re not in touch with reality if you’re thinking in terms of only two dimensions — the world is three-dimensional.
But, is it? Ever since Einstein challenged scholarship and science with his theories of relativity, we speak about the space-time continuum. You need a fourth-dimension, time, to be truly in touch with reality.

Can you really understand a person if you have only a momentary glimpse of his or her life? Does a moment frozen in a snapshot give a true picture of someone else?
Video recordings seem more lifelike because they show movement, change and progression. A true picture of another person is impossible without the dimension of time — the pattern of growth and development through infancy, childhood, adolescence and adulthood.
Just as individuals grow, change and evolve, so do peoples and nations, institutions and political systems, religions and churches. None of them can be adequately understood without factoring in the dimension of time.
Knowledge of history, unfortunately, is often sadly lacking. Mass media give us a daily slice of life, a snapshot, whatever the topic, but no comprehensive perspective.
How well can you understand the tensions within Iraq without knowing about the centuries-long hostility between Sunnis and Shiites, or about the sense of superiority of Iranians, heirs of an ancient empire, to Arabs?
Don’t the roots of a divided Palestine go back to Britain’s century-old divided Middle East policy: support for a Jewish homeland along with support for an Arab nation-state?
Ecumenical apprehensions are less baffling if you know that Latin crusaders invaded Constantinople and displaced the Orthodox patriarch and that Catholic Teutonic Knights fought to conquer Orthodox Russia.
In our rootless, snapshot modern societies, it’s easy to lose one’s bearings — to become “disoriented” — about life and history.
Hopefully we’ll face where the light rises and know the difference between going up and going down.




(Published in
one, 36:2, March 2010