switching it up

Contemplation in a World of Action...Merton quotes (part 1)...because I'm a little obsessed

Contemplation In a World of Action:

“Togetherness is not community. To love our brother we must first respect him in his own authentic reality, and we cannot do this if we have not attained to a basic self-respect and mature identity ourselves. Are our efforts to be more “communal” and to be more of a “family” really genuine or are they only new ways to be intolerant of the solitude and integrity of the individual person? Are we simply trying to submerge and absorb him and keep him from finding an identity that might express itself in dissent and in a desire for greater solitude? Are we simply trying to guard against his entering a “desert” of questioning and paradox that will disturb our own complacencies?”

“Do not be impatient and do not be afraid. Do not imagine that everything depends on some instant magic transformation of constitutions and of laws. You already have what you need right in your hands! You have the grace of your vocation and of your love. No earthly situation has ever been ideal. God does not need an ideal situation in order to carry out his work in our hearts If we do what we can with the means and grace at our disposal, if we sincerely take advantage of our genuine opportunities, the Spirit will be there and his love will not fail us. Our liberation, our solitude, our vision, our understanding and our salvation do not depend on anything remote from us or beyond our reach. Grace has been given us along with our god desires. What is needed is the faith to accept it and the energy to put our faith to work in situations that may not seem to us to be promising. The Holy Spirit will do the rest.”

“But the goal of human freedom, peace, and unity is not unchristian in itself. On the contrary it stems from the New Testament idea of freedom before God, the freedom of the sons of God, the dignity of man redeemed in Christ and man’s vocation to work out historically, in harmony and love, the redemption of the whole world in Christ. Hence these characteristic modern aspirations should represent no special difficulty to us. We should be able to “save” and “redeem” those aspirations which are authentically germane to Christianity even though buried in a matrix of atheism.”

“Critics have also noted the American fear of loneliness. Individual identity is sacrificed in an effort to stay close to the herd, to be no different from others in thought, feeling, or action. To stand aside, to be alone, is to assert a personal identity which refuses to be submerged. Society will not tolerate this. Innumerable social features are designed to prevent it. Yet one of the surest signs of the resolution of the identity crisis is an increased capacity for being alone, for being responsible for oneself. The gradual process that will end in perfect identity involves an awareness of the fact that there are decisions in life and aspects of life’s struggle that a person must face alone. Here is the paradox: the more richly a person lives, the more lonely, in a sense, he becomes. And as a person, in this formative isolation, becomes more able to appreciate the moods and feelings of others, he also becomes more able to have meaningful relationships with them. But the unwritten code of our national culture prohibits aloneness, and this is the second causative factor for a prolonged identity crisis: the obstacles our society imposes to prevent personal reflection.”

“Perhaps our problem consists in wanting to have problems and consequently creating them out of nothing in order to seek solutions! It seems to me that we are now becoming self-consciously and naively “modern.” Hastily and uncritically adjusting any and every formula that seems to fit the new situation, without “changing our minds” in any deeper sense. Basically our trouble remains the same: an obsession with questions and answers, with problems and solutions, with momentous decisions and even with “identity” raised to the level of a kind of absolute.”

“To choose a value that is questioned and doubted is to place oneself in the position of being doubted. The mature person is able to assume this risk.”

“Our first task is to be fully human and to enable the youth of our time to find themselves and develop as men and sons of God. There is no need for a community of religious robots without minds, without hearts, without ideas, and without faces. It is this mindless alienation that characterizes “the world” and life in the world. Monastic spirituality today must be a personalistic and Christian humanism that seeks and saves man’s intimate truth, his personal identity, in order to consecrate it entirely to God.”

“It is true that “times have changed,” but are they not rather the “times” of the “world?” The truth is one and eternal. It does not change."

Merry Christmas

Some words from St. Augustine's Christmas Sermons [i know it's long...but check out how excited he gets...he uses "!" after most of his sentences]

My dearly beloved Brothers and Sisters in Christ! Here we are at midnight. Candles all around. You’re my children of light tonight, adopted tots in the kindergarten of the Lord! Have I got good news for you this holy eve! It’s from the Psalmist! Rejoice in the Lord! Raise bold, laudacious sounds as only the just can do! Yes yes, you already know what I’m going to say, but hear it anyway with a kind and open ear.

First off, come to love the things you believe!

Then speak out about the things you love!

Yes, we’re celebrating this anniversary day. Christ is born! God of the Father! A human being from a human mother! From the immortality of the Father- from the virginity of a mother. From the Father comes the Principle of Life- from His mother, the end of death!

Yes, my Brothers and Sisters, it’s the Angelic Voice we hear today! A rousing ovation! A feathery fluttering! The Savior came to save us today! What meaning can all this angelistic activity possibly have for us? The angels are His heavenly messengers; we’re His carrier pigeons. Ambrosia aplenty for them; manna galore for us.

A question arises. Just what was that heavenly fare? The Evangelist John had the answer.

“In the beginning was the Word…and the Word was made Flesh, and dwelled among us.” Whose Word? The Father Himself. What Word? The Son Himself. Never the One without the Other.

For humankind to eat the Bread of Angels, the Creator of Angels baked a loaf, the Loaf of Loaves; that’s to say, He was made man. He nudges the stars, but nurses from the breast.

Truth has sprung from the earth, or so the Psalmist has sung. Christ is born of the flesh- and that’s what we’ll sing today! We prayerfully presume we’re the Songs of God. Why? Because we’ve received the power to be such. For your sake the Timeless Cause of time has become a temporal effect Himself. Because of you, my dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, the Founder of the World has made His appearance in the flesh. Because of you the Creator has become a creature. Now I know you find this hard to believe, so I ask you to believe something else first. God was made man so that He could make men into gods. Without losing a slip of what He was, He wanted to become what He’d made. That’s to say, He made what He already was. How? By adding human nature to Divine Nature without at the same time losing His Divine Nature in that human nature.

When the Wordiness of an Other-worldly God revealed itself as a worldly if worldless tot, and when the Word of God let out, if not the Wisdom of God, then an unholy howl, that’s when we’re talking about the Birthday of the Lord. The Scholars in the East read the Divine Event in the skies. The Shepherds in the hills heard the Angelic Voices. We get the word today, the anniversary of the event, in the solemnity of our celebration. In it we refer to the Psalmist’s prophecy: Truth has sprung from the earth, and Justice has looked down from Heaven. The Truth that holds the world together with rugged hands has sprung from the earth so that He may be held by His mother’s lacy fingers. The Truth that overflows the Heavens’ banks has sprung from the earth so that it may lie within the friendly confines of a manger.

Where did “peace on earth” come from? From the Truth that sprang from the earth; that’s to say, from Christ who was born of the flesh.

The Lord has made all things, and yet He takes His stand among the very things He’s made. He’s the Revealer of His father, and at the same time He’s the Creator of His mother. He’s the Word of God before there were timepieces; He’s the Word made flesh who stoped the clock when He was made flesh. He made the sun with His own hands, and yet He Himself was made under the light and heat of the sun. He remains with His Father, and yet He goes forth from His mother. He’s the Creator of the heavens and the earth; and yet He takes His own rise under the heavens and the earth. As God He has more Wisdom than He can mouth, and yet as a babe He hasn’t enough mouth to utter the Wisdom He knows. His divinity isn’t underwhelmed by His humanity, nor is His humanity overwhelmed by His divinity. He didn’t abandon His divine agenda when He picked up His carpenter’s tools. He didn’t stop holding His universe together with His might arms while He was trying to catch flies with His baby fingers. He put on the clumsiness of the flesh when He entered the Virgin’s womb, and yet His movement throughout the universe wasn’t hampered by the baggy pants. He didn’t take away the food of Wisdom from the Angels while He was supplying us with the sweetness of the Lord.

Let’s stroll in the light of His aura!

Let’s rejoice in His presence!

Let’s be truly glad He’s here with us today, of all days!

mutations, evolution, and being made in the image

It makes me sad to sit and hear people use science, and especially evolutionary science, to devalue human life. First of all, leaving God out of it for a moment, the process of strict evolution should imply nothing less than the fact that human life is of extraordinary value and is special and different than any other system of life on earth.

Today, sitting in Houston, I heard:

“we are just an accident”

“how are we any different than the bacteria that give us our winter colds”

“paramecium, though there is one in the white house now [their words, not mine], were here first, they have the ability to make us healthy or sick what makes us think that there is anything special about us?”

*disclaimer- I’m talking here about evolution and the value of human life in creation [largely with respect to DNA mutations], not creation in the sense of ‘big bang/garden of eden/life coming out of the water’ [I realize that combined three very large and controversial views of creation…again, not what I’m debating here]. I am aware that the two topics are inexorably connected. *

Hellooooo. Because we are different than paramecium. And the difference between life forms, biologically, socially, structurally…etc, is of huge importance. Our lives are based off of the differences between us and other living life forms. Nothing about evolution suggests that the way that life forms currently exist are a result of an accident, and any evolutionary biology professor would say the same, and has said the same [I was in the class]. Nothing. Evolution argues the opposite. Accidents do not create hearts that pump at exactly the correct speed with the perfect pressure through vessels that give different body parts exactly the right amount of blood and oxygen to do the tasks that their physical form has set them up to do. Accidents imply that there is no intention of obtaining the end result that is obtained, whether it be good or bad. A negative accident would be spilling your coffee; a positive accident would be missing your onramp to the freeway but ending up avoiding a whole lot of traffic and finding a new route.

Nature [again, God aside, for a moment], has every intention of working as hard as it possibly can to intentionally establish living things that thrive. Survival of the fittest [which I believe is a pretty biblical model of life…more on that at the end] is based off of a systematic perpetuation of life. Life that does not thrive dies out. And life that thrives continues on. It is logical and purposeful, not accidental. There is no middle ground- either you/your species is becoming more adept to your environment, or it is becoming less adept, ie. the environment around you is advancing more efficiently.

So what then about the fact that differences between living things arise because of mutations [often seen as random/accidental] in DNA? Mutation seems like a word and action that implies an accidental happening. A different mutation may very well have occurred and led to a different form of life, humans that looked different than we do. Yes. True. But a different mutation did not occur. Making hypotheticals about occurrences that establish the very nature of life is not helpful or productive, and doing so ignores the actual issue at hand. Sure, we could have evolved differently had different mutations taken place. But so could the rest of creation. All of life could, hypothetically, look and function different than it does. But the point is not to look at how we each look/function as individual living beings; the point is to look at the relationships.

To bring in God for a moment, living things in the Garden are defined largely by their relationship to other living things. Humans are given a relationship to one another, a relationship to the plants and animals, and a relationship to the land and to God. It is not the physical form of each of these living things [physical forms that are, from an evolutionary standpoint, defined by a series of differences in DNA mutations] but it is the relational result of the physical forms that is important. It is important that physically, men and women can reproduce. It is important, if they are to have dominion, that their physical forms allow them to carry out that command. To be created in the image of God…what does that mean? How can we be told that soooo early in Genesis when it seems like we haven’t actually read enough words to actually know what God’s image is? The only answer is that there must be enough in those first few chapters of Genesis to define God’s image enough for us so that when God creates man in His image, we have some understanding of what that means. Check it out…what do you think?

Back to talking about the mutations/relationship theme…

All of creation still moves towards perfection, molecularly, physically, and relationally. And perfection is perfection. Whether it takes on the physical form we now have, or whether every living thing looked different because of a different set of mutations. Relational perfection does not depend on one species’ physical form, but rather on all of creations forms put together. The point is the intended perfection in the relationship between all of life. The way our bodies are perfectly formed allows for the food that we are meant to eat [true for all living things]; the way our bodies are formed to live in certain environments…the list could go on forever…go to the zoo and see what other things you come up with. We don’t have useless parts [ok, some argue that our little toes are useless, and our wisdom teeth, and our appendix…but those things are being slowly weeded out of our DNA as well- it’s true- check out the research].

The question should not be “HOW are we different than bacteria”, but why, and what does that mean for us, individually and communally?

If all DNA generally works the same for all living things [meaning- the process of making/using/destroying DNA in the body doesn’t change much between living things], then the difference in our current evolutionary status transcends into a reason deeper than DNA. Don’t get me wrong though, DNA is amaaazing. [hint: because an amazing creator created it]. We are made in the image of God. While the mechanisms for mutation in our DNA and a bug’s DNA are the same, we are blessed, from beginning to eternity, with DNA that is blessed to form us in to creatures who relationally exhibit the image of God. We can mutate and come to look very different, but our relationship with other humans and other living things will continue to reflect the image of God. Even in a world governed by mutation, the driving force behind it all is still constant and unchanging.

My DNA is 97.7% the same as that of a mouse. 97.7% identical. It is 99.9% the same as someone of a different race than myself. Anything that lives and breathes and moves is not so genetically different than humans. Yet the difference that is there is HUGE. Where does our huge difference come from? WE, are created in the image of God. So then, what does it really mean to be ‘made in the image?’ And this cannot be answered with pure genetics. God is relational, and our image, at least in part [I think it’s a pretty big part though], is also defined by relationship with Him/nature/others.

So I mentioned before that I thought survival of the fittest was a pretty biblical notion. Here's how I reason that. God commands man to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. It is a blessing/command that is given to generation after generation. So let's ask the question: what drives survival of the fittest? It is driven by a desire for every living thing to be able to reproduce and have viable offspring. Survival of the fittest is defined by the yearning for living things to have the most amount of healthy offspring. It is driven by the desire for everything with a heartbeat to be fruitful and multiply. All of creation has adapted so that each animal can best follow through with being fruitful and multiplying.

Do I believe in a God who created man? Yes. Do I believe that when He created man He knew what He was doing down to every last base pair in our DNA and electron needed to hold our DNA together? Yes. Do I believe in a God who sees, just as He sees each hair on my head, the base pairs in my DNA and controls their mutations? Yes.

The word mutation, as scientists use it, is misleading. It implies change, not randomness or accident as textbooks so often imply. Biologists describe mutations firstly as spontaneous. Still, this is different than random, and mistaking spontaneity for randomness is dangerous. What is spontaneous to us may not be to God, and this is true from our major life events down to our DNA.

Technically speaking, a mutation occurs when a DNA gene is damaged or changed in such a way as to alter the genetic message carried by that gene. A mutagen is an agent of substance that can bring about a permanent alteration to the physical composition of a DNA gene such that the genetic message is changed.

God is a mutagen.

But oh so much better than most mutagens, like sunlight or foreign chemicals. He’s a mutagen, an agent that directs change, but with a purpose and plan and character that drives change in love.

It makes me sad that humans would rather view their creation as accidental rather than founded in love.

Despite me sounding like I’m 100% sure if everything I say here, these are still my words and potentially [if not probably] incorrect in places. Perhaps I am trying to fit together things that simply do not fit together. But I don't think that is totally the case. Here are some better ones:

Genesis 1: 26-27

Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground." So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

Psalm 73:26

My flesh and my heart may fail,
       but God is the strength of my heart
       and my portion forever.

Isaiah 29:16

You turn things upside down! Shall the potter be regarded as the clay, that the thing made should say of its maker,
   "He did not make me";
or the thing formed say of him who formed it,
   "He has no understanding"?

Psalm 139:13-14

For you formed my inward parts;
   you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works;
   my soul knows it very well.

a little update

I really don’t xanga much anymore….some things about this year:

-I LOVE my residents. I don’t know them all well, but the few I do know…aww man, good times with study parties and stress relievers. I also love seeing last year’s residents around campus, acting all sophomore-ish. RAing is probably one of my favorite parts of college life…most days.  

-the fires in san diego made me think about material possessions, and how fleeting this world is

-I read for fun at least 20 minutes every day and it makes all the difference. That and running regularly with kfin. Life is sweet.

-I’ve had this really amazing peace when I’ve looked back over the last few years and thought about how and where I spent time and energy.

-I *really* want to stay in Philly, at least for one more year. We’ll see if med school lets me defer. Living with the senior ladies would be sooo fun.

-some pretty paramount Words this semester: Jeremiah 29; 2 Samuel 10:12; Isaiah 58:6-12. There are more.

-This is a vision statement that gives me a lot of excitement:

The College also seeks to improve the health of Americans and the global community through public health training programs and initiatives. Our mission also includes the discovery of new knowledge through research. Lastly, the College supports the education and training of postgraduate physicians, other health care providers, and graduate students in the biomedical sciences.

The goal of the Howard University College of Medicine is to enhance our global recognition as a medical school of the first rank, known for the excellence of our teaching, research and service. We will continue to be a world leader in the training of competent, compassionate physicians and other health professionals for medically underserved communities and populations. In addition, the College envisions that it will be an exemplar in eliminating health disparities and in finding solutions through research and public health programs for medical problems disproportionately found in disadvantaged communities, both in this nation and abroad.

From Merton’s “Contemplation in a World of Action”

"one of the most characteristic American ways of evading the identity problem is conformism, running with the herd, the refusal of solitude, the flight from loneliness. Togetherness is not "community." To love our brother we must first respect him in his own authentic reality, and we cannot do this if we have not attained to a basic self-respect and mature identity ourselves. Are our efforts to be more "communal" and to be more of a "family" really genuine or are they only new ways to be intolerant of the solitude and integrity of the individual person? Are we simply trying to submerge and absorb him and keep him from finding an identity that might express itself in dissent and in a desire for greater solitude? Are we simply trying to guard against his entering a "desert" of questioning and paradox that will disturb our own complacencies?"
 
it made me think: what do we mean when we say we're a community? or when we say we want to serve in the west philly community? what comes to mind when we envision each of those communities? how do we make a community a place that embodies justice, so that we don't submerge and ignore certain identities?

and more...oh man....i heart merton

and i heart these people: