THE JOY OF ABANDONING THE EGO

The older I get, the more I aspire to becoming humble. JUST as I have become accustomed to the idea that it is a great joy to bow my head to the inspirations and instructions of my Bible and my Church, I find that American society is going in the opposite direction!

Recently I watched a short talk by an expert of some sort. I am sorry, but I have forgotten what it is he does and his bona fides. I was impressed by them, but mostly I was riveted by what he had to say, the manner in which he said it, and his demeanor. He was discussing how Americans have come to discount, and in some instances almost despise, the advice of experts in their field. I sensed a tinge of wistfulness in his delivery, or perhaps sadness, for what this means for America and how it will affect us all, if appreciation for truth dies.

He said something to the effect that Americans think they are as smart as the experts, they know as much as the experts, and that their opinions are MORE valuable than the advice of the experts who have the education, the wisdom, the experience, and the specialized training in their field. To a great extent, these folks who consider themselves the ultimate experts on everything are responsible for the election of Donald Trump to the presidency. Donald Trump, who has no experience whatsoever in government, has no education in it, and no training, has strong opinions about government, nonetheless.

I have to ask myself, "from whence did these opinions arise?" From what I have seen so far, everything that he has sought to do has been in service to his personal agenda, i.e., those things which will benefit him, his family, and his billionaire friends and acquaintances. He was elected as a representative, in a bizarre sense, of "the common man," but the only thing he has in common with the common man is that the common man does not have expertise in governing, and that is where the similarity ends.

I see this trend in Catholicism where people feel it is their right to demand of the Pope that he adhere to a political orientation that these individuals think he ought to bow. Instead of opening their minds to the wisdom and guidance of the Pope, who is an expert in Catholicism and whose choosing has been inspired by the Holy Spirit, I am saddened to read criticisms of him by those who consider themselves his superiors and the arbiters of all his behaviors and guidance. This type of arrogance is the hard-heartedness discussed in the Bible at great length and with frequency, throughout the Old and New Testament.

I keep telling people that unless the Pope gets all liquored up and goes careening through Rome in a convertible with three ladies of the evening and sells indulgences so he can hire troupes of tango dancers to entertain him and his friends, we need to shut up and listen. Just shut up and listen. It is his role to guide, and it is our role to be led. While we would, perhaps have a right to comment on obvious mortal sins, we have no right to criticize his guidance. He is our shepherd, after all. Even I have the occasional befuddlement over something he has said. Sometimes his meaning is incomprehensible to me, but it isn't an occasion for criticism. I just wait for the Lord to inspire my understanding, and hope that understanding comes. If it does not, I endeavor to say nothing.

So, as usual, I am out of step with my culture. Ever the outsider, I now find myself in the weirdly surreal position of encouraging people to heed the words of experts.

Many people are terribly uncomfortable with truths that are not pretty, that do not entertain. This avoidance of unpleasant truth bespeaks a lack of emotional maturity. Everything must be bubble gum, unicorns and rainbows. Many people have turned Jesus into a vending machine covered with glitter. It's too bad, really. What He said about Himself is nothing like sweet candy man Jesus that dispenses gum drops on demand. Just insert one prayer. He said:

"Do not think I came to send peace upon earth; 

I came not to send peace but the sword. For I 

came to set a man at variance against his father, 

and the daughter against her mother, and the 

daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. 

And a man's enemies shall be they of his 

own household."

Matthew 10:34-36

Becoming Christian, standing up for the truth, standing up for what is right, is not popular in an evil family, for instance. The aspiration to goodness is a slap in the face of selfish narcissistic family members, and you will be the black sheep for it. This is common, and Jesus promised this. Hearing this unattractive scenario is not popular, particularly among those Christians who do not stand up for Christian values in their families, but go along to get along.

Not only will your own family shun you, but Christians in name only will also shun you because your devotion to truth will convict them in their falsities. Jesus puts the sword in your hand, and life is a battle from then on, because it seems that everyone will fight you, even some of those who call themselves your brothers and sisters in Christ.

Despite the constant battle, we must learn to love truth because God is pure. There is no falseness in him. There are no lies. Satan is the father of lies, not God.

Climate change is an area of discussion in which a lot of people refuse to heed the warnings of the experts. 99.99% of climatologists say that global warming is mainly accelerated by the activities of man and that the situation is almost at the tipping point where, even if we DO stop our bad habits and invest ourselves completely in reversing the damage, we may still experience permanent damages. There are a large number of climate change deniers who tout the opinions of the tiny tiny percentage of "scientists" or pseudo-scientists in order to bolster their nutty idea that man has no or very little impact on the environment. It is ridiculous. It is dangerous.

Republicatholics quickly turned against the Pope when he wrote Laudato Si because it included an admonishment about heeding the advice of the climatology experts about global warming. Doing something about global warming will decimate the Republican agenda that caters to the oil companies and their billionaires. The Pope applies spiritual principles to weighty issues such as whether or not to destroy the planet that the good Lord gave us. He doesn't think it is a good idea.

Another aspect of that teaching was that the poor have been relegated to the world of cement, glass, asphalt and dirt, while only the wealthy have any ownership of the beauty of nature. Wealthy Republicatholics and their minions weren't happy about that, despite the clear Catholic teaching that the world has been given to every human being and was not meant for all its resources to be hoarded by a tiny percentage of people while everyone else drinks water with lead in it.

Ever since Laudato Si, social media has been ablaze with Republicatholic derision of the Pope. Some of the talk is extreme. A somewhat smaller faction is claiming that he is not the authentic Pope. It is all nonsense - just like the birther nonsense about our last president - just like the Holocaust deniers (who also deny they are white supremacists.)

I watched a program the other day about a sculptural artist who has created large sculptures of 5 of the birds that have become extinct in modern times. The carrier pigeon is one. I can't remember the others out of the hundreds of birds that man has killed. Another program that told the story of Audubon, the great painter/naturalist, showed a painting of a Carolina parrot that was gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous. They're all gone - hunted to extinction. The dodo is famous, of course.

There was a particularly touching story of the last grouse of some type in America. There was just one male left. Just before he died, he flew to the top of the highest tree in his valley and called out over his territory, loudly, almost desperately. He had spent almost his entire life completely alone. Then, one day, he died.  And that was IT for this type of bird.

Of course, most Americans are familiar with the paroxysm of blood lust that decimated the buffalo, leaving entire herds on the plains, their heads chopped off for trophies, their corpses rotting in the sun.

There is a tendency in the heart of man that is called concupiscence. It is the desire for MORE, always MORE. Without restraint, a small number of people can bring to bear huge consequences on the delicate balance of the natural world. They've done it over and over again in our history. This gluttony is like the fuel in the engine of a car. Every car needs a driver, a controlling force - a regulator; otherwise, it is chaos. The car runs off the road, over the cliff, and into the ditch at the bottom of the canyon, a total wreck.

Intensive farming geared toward producing crops that travel well has hidden an incredible diversity of fruits and vegetables with which people used to be familiar. Lovers of the earth have begun to seek out heirloom varieties, as they are now called, and are furiously cultivating and collecting seed, and making these seeds available, so that the wonderful diversity of nature with which we have been gifted does not disappear entirely.

When I was in the convent, I walked through the kitchen after working in the garden and picked up a nice black plum from the basket on the counter. When I bit into it, I found it was very rich, creamy, and green. I had bitten into an heirloom variety of avocado that only grows in certain areas of Southern California and Mexico. The smooth black skin is edible. A light went off in my head after that. I began to understand this subject.

Fruits and vegetables, birds, Donald Trump, Catholicism and the Pope - What do these topics have in common with one another? History has proven that failing to heed the advice of experts results in disastrous losses for humanity.

So, here I am, writing a blog. Am I one of these people that elevates my opinion above all others? I hope I am not. Wherever I have wandered from the guidance of the experts, it is by accident and not by design. My intention is faithfulness. Even when I write an opinion piece, I am endeavoring always to keep it within the bounds of factual content. My aim is to always conform opinion to the best advice of experts in whatever field I am dancing.

Why write a blog at all? Writing is in my blood. I cannot stay away from it. It compels me. I would rather give it up, but I can not. I have tried several times, but always come back to it.

Sometimes writing is my art. Sometimes it is the expression of my religion. Sometimes it is the diary entry of a hermit seeking the ear of an understanding human being. Sometimes it is just my DNA speaking. I come from a long line of writers. It is an Irish thing.

A favorite writer of mine - Teresa of Avila

I strive to speak within the heart of humanity, to join with all people of good will in this process of writing and reading. I hope to speak with you, to spark our common light and join it together in a conflagration of understanding and joyous inspiration. Even a frustrated rant has this purpose at its core. I may fail in my intention, but I offer the best I can do on that day.

What I want to convey today is the great joy, the bliss even, of bowing one's head to the guidance of the Lord and the church, first of all. As guidance we have the Bible, the catechism, the Popes and the saints. Please join me in a mutual prayer that we may never become so educated that we consider ourselves superior to these. If we do not adopt this stance, disastrous events will occur.

Secondly, to remain faithful to all words of truth, to become more enamored of the pursuit of truth in all things, and to, most of all, always endeavor to speak Truth. It is better to say nothing at all than to spew an uninformed opinion. After all, there is nowhere in the Bible that says we should all keep our lips flapping with egotistical opinions. On the contrary, if we do not restrain our tongues, we run the risk of spreading lies, which is an invitation to Satan to pull up a chair and sit down in the kitchen.

Keeping this kind of restraint is not easy for some of us who gaily prattle on, as if leaving a moment of silence were a sin, but we can learn together that if a matter is not worth investigating fully, it is not worth discussing at all.

Like you, I am a work in progress in this matter, as in all others. I hope to get the hang of it before I'm dead. That's the best I can do. I hope you'll join me.

God bless us all!

Silver Rose

THE POPE'S NEW ENCYCLICAL - IT IS NOT JUST GLOBAL WARMING

"The universe unfolds in God, who fills it completely.  Hence,

there is a mystical meaning to be found in a leaf, in a mountain

trail, in a dewdrop, in a poor person's face.  The ideal is not only

to pass from the exterior to the interior to discover the action of

God in the soul, but also to discover God in all things.  Saint 

Bonaventure teaches us that 'contemplation deepens the more

we feel the working of God's grace within our hearts, and the

better we learn to encounter God in creatures outside ourselves.'"

Pope Francis, Laudato si', paragraph 233

Some of the day's talking heads are dismissing the Pope's Encyclical, Laudato si', without even reading it, apparently, because they seem to think that it is all about global warming and, because he isn't a scientist, they claim he has no business speaking about ecology.  According to Rush Limbaugh, the Pope's encyclical confirms that he is a "Marxist."  This isn't the first time that Limbaugh has labeled the Pope thusly.  I wonder if the man has ever looked up the term in a dictionary.

Hear what Limbaugh has to say about "this global warming encyclical" HERE where he attempts to reduce this beautiful, multi-faceted document into a "rant" against the rich.  He also discounts the Pope's "assertions" about climate change because the Pope isn't a scientist.  The Pope doesn't have to be a scientist to comment upon a spiritual orientation that is reflected in the world around it.  He does mention some scientific facts, but he relies upon the findings of scientists for those.

I would hope that, just because Limbaugh and people like him are calling this the Pope's "global warming encyclical," the public will not dismiss it as such, because Pope Francis covers a lot of territory in this elegantly crafted but easily accessible document.  All one has to do is read the document to see the Truth.

On the other hand, Ryan T. Anderson, of the Heritage Foundation, gives a more than credible overview of the encyclical, which surprises me because I do not typically agree with much of anything the Heritage Foundation has to say.  It has always seemed to me that they were hostile toward the poor, but there wasn't much of that sort of thing in Anderson's article, which is titled POPE FRANCIS' ENCYCLICAL IS ABOUT MORE THAN CLIMATE CHANGE. IT'S ABOUT CULTURE.

It seems to me that, here in America at least, the culture has a grim view of life that denies the majority of Americans the right to be connected with the beauty of nature and with cultural symbols, architecture and art that feed the soul.  Francis talks about how it is not healthy for people to be surrounded by concrete, asphalt and glass, such as in most large cities.  The poor, especially, are subject to a gritty version of bare survival that does not take into account the quality of life, the need for beauty and nature, the hunger of the human soul for the experience of God through the rest of God's creation.

Under the heading DECLINE IN THE QUALITY OF HUMAN LIFE AND THE BREAKDOWN OF SOCIETY, paragraphs 43 through 45, the Pope says:

"43.  Human beings too are creatures of this world, 

enjoying a right to life and happiness, and endowed 

with unique dignity.  So we cannot fail to consider the 

effects on people's lives of environmental deterioration, 

current models of development and the throwaway 

culture."

"44.  Nowadays, for example, we are conscious of 

the disproportionate and unruly growth of many 

cities, which have become unhealthy to live in, not 

only because of pollution caused by toxic emissions 

but also as a result of urban chaos, poor transporta-

tion, and visual pollution and noise.  Many cities are 

huge, inefficient structures, excessively wasteful of 

energy and water.  neighbourhoods, even those 

recently built, are congested, chaotic and lacking in 

sufficient green space.  We were not meant to be 

inundated by cement, asphalt, glass and metal, and 

deprived of physical contact with nature."

"45.  In some places, rural and urban alike, the 

privatization of certain spaces has restricted 

people's access to places of particular beauty.  

In others,"ecological" neighbourhoods have been 

created which are closed to outsiders in order to 

ensure an artificial tranquility.  Frequently, we 

find beautiful and carefully manicured green space in 

so-called "safer areas of cities, but not in the more hidden 

areas where the disposable of society live."

Paragraph number 45 spoke to me very strongly because my living situation exactly mirrors what the Pope is referring to therein.

When I moved into my apartment complex ten years ago as a disabled lady on limited income, it was a fairly pretty place, especially since it is a property that, though originally built as condominiums, had become partially occupied by disabled, elderly and the working poor on a low income program provided by the city.  There was a dense line of tall, beautiful trees lining the ditch that runs the back side of the property.  Along that line was a nice old wrought iron fence, punctuated now and then with a softly lit globe light on a matching black post.  There was a dirt path that ran the full line of the property, from one end all the way to the fenced-in pool, and I often saw residents strolling the fence line at night, chatting quietly and enjoying the natural ambiance.

Honesuckle and rosemary bushes dotted the landscape, and a few giant cotton wood trees complemented them.  Each downstairs apartment had a patch of grass and a patch of dirt in which to plant flowers.  A peacock had somehow found its way to the property and was living here.  There was a family of beavers, presided over by a giant, silver-backed female who studiously ignored me when she marched the path, preferring, occasionally, to walk from one end of the ditch to the other.  In the spring time, large red-tailed hawks were in abundance, and I often was treated to the sight of them, clinging to the fence, searching for their next meal or teaching their young ones to fly and hunt.

Canadian geese and their chicks, guarded by an inexplicable giant white domestic goose, were plentiful, as were gorgeous little wood ducks and their tiny chicks.  Mallards were in no short supply, and white herons of some variety were often seen hunting from the banks or, with particularly tall individuals, right in the middle of the ditch!  At night, the black crested night herons would perch in those trees on the ditch line.  I was lucky enough to catch sight of a few green herons, which are pretty shy. It was a rich ecological smorgasbord that attracted a giant whitish owl who flew straight down the middle of the ditch at dusk, swiveling its head to look at me with its wide-set eyes as it passed me.

There were plentiful bass, trout and catfish in the ditch, along with the ubiquitous carp that no one wanted to eat, except the really desperate fisherman, but unless you trespassed on our property, you couldn't fish our excellent fishing holes because the dense treeline at the bank wouldn't permit it.  The maintenance man would occasionally fish during his lunch hour, and I shared recipes with him for the catfish that were quite large at the time.

We couldn't really see the golf course on the other side of the ditch, except for a glimpse here and there between the thicket.  Occasionally, we could hear a loud conversation of some golfers that had driven their balls too close to the fence or, which often happened, into the water.

One day, someone in power decided to kill all the grass and bushes.  They turned off the sprinklers for good and just waited for everything to die, which it did in short order.  The grass, the honeysuckle, the rosemary.  A tiny patch of grass was left at the driveway, just below the sign for the apartment complex, false advertising if you ask me!  Another patch of grass near the mailboxes was allowed to live - just barely.  It never really looks like grass any more, but a collection of clipped weeds of one variety or another.  In front of my garage, one of the two small trees that bore a profusion of beautiful flowers every spring, was allowed to die of thirst and was eventually removed by the "gardeners."  I notice that a nearby neighbor started watering the other one to try and keep it alive.  So far, it is hanging on.

Then someone decided to remove ALL the trees from the banks of the ditch, which I used to call "our creek" because it was so charming.  No more.  It took no time for giant machines to come and rip out the trees and carry them away.  Then the banks of the ditch were laid over with a giant netting of huge cement blocks, the purpose of which, I imagine, was to delay the erosion that the trees were preventing by their presence at the water line.  Then the quaint light globes that had dotted the fence line were also ripped out.

Huge machines came in and ripped up the back yards.  They placed some kind of tubing under the soil, which they then topped with heavy weed screen, over which they piled loads of crushed up cement, which is called "crusher fines" in the construction trades.  On the walking path that was previously dirt, they laid a thick carpet of gravel that is almost impossible to walk upon, chunks of gravel finding their way into any kind of shoe you might wear.  Walking the back fence was no longer practical, anyway, because there was no light and most of the line was pitch black at night, except for the occasional harsh light from one of the lamps that was placed on select walls of the buildings.

This is when my childhood asthma came back like a lion into the Colosseum, and I have had terrible trouble breathing every day.  The wind whips up, picking up the dust, dirt, cement and sand choking my sinuses and windpipe.  The back of my throat feels as if it's been sandblasted and, I suppose, it has.

I rarely see a hawk any more.  A young beaver has taken up residence where the old lady used to live. We have very few fish and almost no turtles since the trees were removed because people could (and did) wander up and down the property just outside our fence line.  I watched them as they took large nets and scooped absolutely everything edible out of our "creek."  Carp, turtles, frogs, bass, trout: they took everything.  Soon, the ditch was barren of life.  It is struggling to regain its footing.  The elm trees are making another appearance all along the ditch line and, if left alone, will be tall enough to screen out our view of the golf course one day.

As for the country club, they seem to have an unlimited supply of water for their lush greens and big cottonwoods.  We can look at it from across two fence lines; the wrought iron one on our side and the wire one on theirs.  At about 9:00 at night, I can hear their sprinklers coming on, with a rhythmic splash into the water of the ditch because at least one of them has a swing that is too wide.

I fought the decimation of our natural world on this side of the fence, but in America it is assumed that only the rich can have access to the beauty of living things, and it was a losing battle from the start.  I have tried (unsuccessfully) to grow various things in pots in my back yard, but I don't have the money I would need to fix the ugliness outside my window.  I often tell people how ironic it is that my "view" from the living room is disturbing: the artificially dyed approximation of dirt on my side, and lush greenery on the rich folks' side.  They tell me I should shut up and be thankful that I can see the pretty place where the rich folks play.  "How many people in your position could have a view like that?" they ask me.

I would say that city planners should be required to read The Pope's encyclical before dooming people to living and working in vast expanses of man-made structures, cement plazas, and artificial dirt substitute in favor of integrated green space where the movement of nature can be witnessed and with which we can freely interact.

Quality of life is not something I read about or something I hear on news programs discussing what to do about the poor, for instance.  There is an underlying presupposition in America that only people with money have the right to a decent quality of life, to beauty and to a life lived within the harmony of natural space.  Clearly, the Pope does not agree.  Neither do I.

The Pope's vision is vast and comprehensive, which is why he spent almost 200 pages discussing ecology and related issues.  It deals with global warming, to be sure, but it is much more than that.  Do yourself a favor and read the document and you will see what I mean.