Fructífero desamparo

EN EL EXILIO
Por Ron Rolheiser

A veces somos más útiles y vivificantes en los momentos en que estamos más indefensos. Todos hemos estado allí. Estamos en un funeral y no hay nada que se pueda decir para aliviar el dolor de alguien que ha perdido a un ser querido. Nos sentimos incómodos e impotentes. Nos gustaría decir o hacer algo, pero no hay nada que decir o hacer, más que estar ahí, abrazar a quien sufre el dolor y compartir nuestra impotencia. Puede parecer extraño, pero es nuestra propia impotencia lo que resulta más útil y generativo en esa situación. Nuestra pasividad es más fructífera y generativa que si estuviéramos haciendo algo.

Padre Ron Rolheiser, OMI

Vemos un ejemplo de esto en Jesús. Dio su vida y su muerte por nosotros, pero en momentos separados. Él dio su vida por nosotros mediante su actividad y su muerte por nosotros mediante su pasividad, es decir, mediante lo que absorbió en el desamparo. De hecho, podemos dividir cada uno de los evangelios en dos partes claras. Hasta su arresto en el huerto de Getsemaní, Jesús es el activo: enseña, cura, hace milagros, alimenta a la gente. Luego, después de ser arrestado, no hace nada: lo esposan, lo llevan, lo juzgan, lo azotan y lo crucifican. Sin embargo, y este es el misterio, creemos que él nos dio más durante ese tiempo en el que no pudo hacer nada que durante todos esos momentos en que estuvo activo. Somos salvos más por su pasividad e impotencia que por sus poderosas acciones durante su ministerio. ¿Cómo funciona esto? ¿Cómo pueden ser tan generativos el desamparo y la pasividad?

En parte esto es misterio, aunque en parte captamos algo de ello a través de la experiencia. Por ejemplo, una madre amorosa que muere en un hospicio, en coma, incapaz de hablar, a veces en esa condición puede cambiar los corazones de sus hijos más poderosamente de lo que jamás pudo hacerlo durante todos los años en los que hizo tanto por ellos. ¿Cuál es la lógica aquí? ¿Con qué metafísica funciona esto?
Permítanme comenzar de manera abstracta y rodear esta pregunta antes de aventurarme a dar una respuesta. Los pensadores ateos de la Ilustración (Nietzsche, Feuerbach, Marx y otros) ofrecen una crítica muy poderosa de la religión y de la experiencia religiosa. Desde su punto de vista, toda experiencia religiosa es simplemente una proyección subjetiva, nada más. Para ellos, en nuestra fe y prácticas religiosas, siempre estamos creando un Dios a nuestra imagen y semejanza, para servir a nuestros propios intereses. (La antítesis misma de lo que creen los cristianos.) Para Nietzsche, por ejemplo, no hay ninguna revelación divina que venga de fuera de nosotros, ni ningún Dios en el cielo que nos revele la verdad divina. Todo somos nosotros, proyectando nuestras necesidades y creando un dios para servir esas necesidades. Toda religión es una proyección humana y egoísta.

¿Qué tan cierto es esto? Uno de los profesores más influyentes con los que he estudiado, el jesuita Michael Buckley, dice lo siguiente frente a esa crítica: Estos pensadores tienen un 90% de razón. Pero están equivocados en un 10%, y ese 10% marca la diferencia.

Una vidriera dentro de la Capilla de Santa Teresa en Holy Hill en Hubertus, Wisconsin, muestra a Santa Teresa enclaustrada escribiendo su autobiografía, “Historia de un alma”. (Foto de noticias OSV/Sam Lucero)

Buckley hizo este comentario mientras enseñaba lo que Juan de la Cruz llama una noche oscura del alma. ¿Qué es una noche oscura del alma? Es una experiencia en la que ya no podemos sentir a Dios imaginativamente o sentir a Dios afectivamente, cuando el sentido mismo de la existencia de Dios se seca dentro de nosotros y nos quedamos en una oscuridad agnóstica, incapaces (en la cabeza, el corazón y las entrañas) de evocar cualquier sentido de Dios.

Sin embargo (y este es el punto, precisamente porque estamos indefensos e incapaces de evocar conceptos imaginativos o sentimientos afectivos sobre Dios), Dios ahora puede fluir puramente en nosotros, sin que podamos colorear o contaminar esa experiencia. Cuando todos nuestros esfuerzos son inútiles, la gracia finalmente puede tomar el control y fluir hacia nosotros en pureza. De hecho, así es como toda revelación auténtica entra en nuestro mundo. Cuando la impotencia humana nos vuelve incapaces de hacer que Dios sirva a nuestro propio interés, Dios puede entonces fluir en nuestras vidas sin contaminación.

Ahora bien, esto también es válido para el amor humano. Gran parte de nuestro amor mutuo, sin importar nuestra sinceridad, está teñido de interés propio y, en algún momento, es egoísta. De alguna manera, inevitablemente formamos a aquellos que amamos a nuestra imagen y semejanza. Sin embargo, como ocurre con la crítica de Buckley a los pensadores ateos de la Ilustración, este no es siempre el caso. Hay ciertas situaciones en las que de ninguna manera podemos manchar el amor y convertirlo en algo egoísta. ¿Cuáles son esas situaciones? Precisamente aquellos en los que nos encontramos completamente indefensos, mudos, tartamudos, incapaces de decir o hacer nada que sea útil. En estas “noches oscuras del alma” particulares, cuando somos completamente incapaces de darle forma a la experiencia, el amor y la gracia pueden fluir pura y poderosamente.

En su obra clásica El Medio Divino, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin nos desafía a ayudar a los demás tanto a través de nuestra actividad como de nuestra pasividad. El tiene razón. Podemos ser generativos a través de lo que hacemos activamente por los demás, y podemos ser particularmente generativos cuando permanecemos pasivamente junto a ellos en su impotencia.

(El padre oblato Ron Rolheiser es teólogo, maestro y autor galardonado. Se le puede contactar a través de su sitio web www.ronrolheiser.com. Facebook/ronrolheiser)

La gente se reúne en el Museo de Soldados Malditos y Prisioneros Políticos de Polonia, en Varsovia, para un servicio conmemorativo el 4 de noviembre de 2023 en memoria de los soldados y patriotas polacos de la Segunda Guerra Mundial asesinados allí por el régimen comunista. Cuando terminó la guerra, la prisión estaba bajo el control del nuevo Ministerio de Seguridad comunista de Polonia, cuyos funcionarios también eliminaron en secreto a cientos de internados en circunstancias reveladas sólo en la década de 1990. (Foto de OSV News/cortesía del Museo de los Soldados Malditos)

A subtler kind of poverty

IN EXILE
By Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI

There are different ways of being excluded in life.

Earlier this year, one of my older brothers died. By every indication he had lived an exemplary life, one lived mainly for others. He died much loved by everyone who knew him. His was a life lived for family, church, community, and friends.

Giving the homily at his funeral, I shared that, while he almost always brought a smile, a graciousness, and some wit to every situation, underneath he sometimes had to swallow hard to always do that. Why? Because, even though through his entire adult life he gave himself to serving others, for much of his life he didn’t have much choice in the matter. Here’s his story.

Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI

He was one of the older children in our family, a large second-generation immigrant family, struggling with poverty in an isolated rural area of the Canadian prairies where educational facilities weren’t easily available at that time. So, for him, as for many of his contemporaries, both men and women, the normal expectation was that after elementary school (an eighth-grade education) you were expected to end your school days and begin to work to support your family. Indeed, when he graduated from elementary school, there was no local high school for him to go to. Making this more unfortunate, he was perhaps the brightest, most gifted mind in our family. It’s not that he didn’t want to continue his formal education. But, he had to do what most others of his age did at that time, leave school and begin working, giving your entire salary over every month to support your family. He did this with good cheer, knowing this was expected of him.

Through the years, from age sixteen when he first entered the work force until he took over the family farm in his mid-thirties, he worked for farmers, worked in construction and did everything from operating a backhoe to driving a truck. Moreover, when our parents died and he took over our farm, there were a number of years when he was still pressured to use the farm to support the family. By the time he was finally freed of this responsibility, it was too late (not radically, but existentially) for him to restart his formal education. He lived out his final years before retirement as a farmer, though as one who found his energy elsewhere, in involvement in ongoing education and lay ministries programs where he thrived emotionally and intellectually. Part of his sacrifice too was that he never married, not because he was a temperamental bachelor, but because the same things that bound him to duty also, existentially, never afforded him the opportunity to marry.

After I shared his story at his funeral, I was approached by several people who said: That’s also my brother! That’s also my sister! That was my dad! That was my mother.

Having grown up where this was true of a number of my older siblings, today, whenever I see people working in service jobs such as cooking in cafeterias, cleaning houses, mowing lawns, working in construction, doing janitorial work and other work of this kind, I am often left to wonder, are they like my brother? Did they get to choose this work or are they doing it because of circumstances? Did this person want to be a doctor, or writer, a teacher, an entrepreneur, or a CEO of some company, and end up having to take this job because of an economic or other circumstance? Don’t get me wrong. There’s nothing demeaning or less-than-noble in these jobs. Indeed, working with your hands is perhaps the most honest work of all – unlike my own work within the academic community where it can be easy to be self-serving and mostly irrelevant. There’s a wonderful dignity in working with your hands, as there was for my brother. However, the importance and dignity of that work notwithstanding, the happiness of the person doing it is sometimes predicated on whether or not he or she had a choice, that is, whether or not he or she is there by choice or because factors ranging from the economic situation of their family, to their immigrant status, to lack of opportunity, have forced them there.

As I walk past these folks in my day-to-day life and work, I try to notice them and appreciate the service they are rendering for the rest of us. And sometimes I say to myself: This could be my brother. This could be my sister. This could be the brightest mind of all who was not given the opportunity to become a doctor, a writer, nurse, a teacher or a social worker.

If in the next life, as Jesus promised, there’s to be a reversal where the last shall be first, I hope these people, like my brother, who were deprived of some of the opportunities that the rest of us enjoyed, will read my heart with an empathy that surpasses my understanding of them during their lifetime.

(Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser is a theologian, teacher and award-winning author. He can be contacted through his website www.ronrolheiser.com.)

Our lifestyle and our over-strained planet

IN EXILE
By Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI

In a book, The Book of Hope, which he co-authored with Jane Goodall, Douglas Abrams makes this statement: Creating the human race may be the single biggest mistake evolution ever made.

He says this tongue-in-cheek since he recognizes that the emergence of the human race was clearly intended by the evolutionary process and that rather than being a colossal mistake it is the apex of the process. Nonetheless, today, the human race is a huge threat to planet earth. Simply put, there are now over seven billion people on the planet and already in many places we have used up nature’s limited resources faster than nature can replace them. By the year 2050 there will probably be 10 billion of us. If we carry on with business as usual, the planet simply cannot sustain us, at least if we continue in our present lifestyle.

And the lifestyle referred to here is not, first of all, the lavish lifestyle of the rich who can be reckless and consume more than their share of resources. They, of course, contribute to the problem and unduly influence the rest us in our own habits of consumption; but the lifestyle referred to here is what you and I, conscientious consumers, are living, even as we conserve, recycle, compost, drive electric cars and try to live simply.

Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI

I can take myself as an example. I’m trying to be sensitive to what my own consumption is doing to mother earth. By comparison to those who have a luxurious lifestyle, I can claim to live pretty simply. I don’t buy what I don’t need, have a very small wardrobe, and am cautious about the amount of electricity and water I use. I drive a second-hand compact car and try to drive it only when necessary. I help assure that the thermostat in our house is set so as to ensure the minimal use of electrical energy, and I live in a relatively small house, recycle and try to use as little plastic as possible.

But, on the other hand, I have two computers, a desktop in my office and a laptop at home. I have a cellphone which, through the years, has had to be updated four different times in terms of buying a new model and junking the old one. I shower daily and, depending upon physical work and exercise, sometimes take a second shower. I drive a car. I get on an airplane at least once a month for conferences and meetings and I fly internationally several times a year to visit family. I don’t have a lot of clothes, but my ministry and work require a certain standard of dress (which I meet minimally).

I think I can claim a simple lifestyle, given where I live and the work I do. However, realistically, if all seven (plus) billion people in the world lived as I do, there wouldn’t be enough resources to sustain us. Bottomline, the world cannot support eight billion people if everyone lives as I do, and as most of us do in the more affluent parts of our world. What’s the answer?

We can lay a guilt trip on ourselves and on others, though this isn’t necessarily helpful. What can be helpful? There’s no easy answer. Those of us living in the more affluent parts of our world can make changes, but can we simply stop using computers and mobile phones? We can conserve water, but can we abandon our present standards of hygiene? We can conserve electricity, but can we simply stop driving our cars and darken all our city buildings at night? We can be more scrupulous on how much we travel on airplanes, but can we live without airplane travel? We can cut back on what we buy in terms of excess food, excess clothing, and excess luxuries and entertainment. We can recycle, compost and not use plastic bags – and all of this, cumulatively, will make a difference. Indeed, all of this needs to be done. However, helpful though this is, it alone will not solve the problem.

For Jane Goodall, beyond these individual things, we need to do some collective things to solve the existential threat to this planet. Goodall names three: First, we must alleviate poverty. If there are people living in crippling poverty, it is understandable that they will cut down the last tree to grow food or catch the last fish because they are desperate to feed their families. Second, we must eliminate government corruption and corporate greed. Without good government and concern for the common good in business, it is impossible to solve our enormous social and environmental problems. Moreover, those who for their own benefit refuse to face the problem will go on unchallenged. Finally, collectively too, we must realistically face up to the tension between our lifestyle and the ever-growing population on this planet.
Thoughtless consumers are part of the problem – but so are the rest of us, me included, who fancy ourselves as living simply.

(Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser is a theologian, teacher and award-winning author. He can be contacted through his website www.ronrolheiser.com.)

Nuestro estilo de vida y nuestro planeta sobrecargado

En el Exilio
Por Ron Rolheiser
En un libro, El libro de la esperanza, del que fue coautor con Jane Goodall, Douglas Abrams hace esta afirmación: Crear la raza humana puede ser el mayor error jamás cometido por la evolución.

Dice esto irónicamente porque reconoce que el surgimiento de la raza humana fue claramente previsto por el proceso evolutivo y que, en lugar de ser un error colosal, es la cúspide del proceso. Sin embargo, hoy la raza humana es una enorme amenaza para el planeta Tierra. En pocas palabras, ahora hay más de siete mil millones de personas en el planeta y ya en muchos lugares hemos agotado los recursos limitados de la naturaleza más rápido de lo que la naturaleza puede reemplazarlos. En el año 2050 probablemente seremos 10 mil millones de personas. Si seguimos como siempre, el planeta simplemente no podrá sustentarnos, al menos si continuamos con nuestro estilo de vida actual.

Y el estilo de vida al que nos referimos aquí no es, en primer lugar, el estilo de vida lujoso de los ricos, que pueden ser imprudentes y consumir más recursos de los que les corresponde. Por supuesto, contribuyen al problema e influyen indebidamente en nuestros propios hábitos de consumo; pero el estilo de vida al que nos referimos aquí es el que usted y yo, consumidores conscientes, vivimos, incluso mientras conservamos, reciclamos, hacemos abono, conducimos automóviles eléctricos y tratamos de vivir con sencillez.

Padre Ron Rolheiser, OMI

Puedo tomarme a mí mismo como ejemplo. Estoy tratando de ser sensible a lo que mi propio consumo le está haciendo a la madre tierra. En comparación con aquellos que tienen un estilo de vida lujoso, puedo afirmar que vivo con bastante sencillez. No compro lo que no necesito, tengo un armario muy pequeño y soy cauteloso con la cantidad de electricidad y agua que consumo. Conduzco un coche compacto de segunda mano y trato de conducirlo sólo cuando es necesario. Ayudo a asegurar que el termostato de nuestra casa esté configurado para garantizar el uso mínimo de energía eléctrica, y vivo en una casa relativamente pequeña, reciclo y trato de usar la menor cantidad de plástico posible.

Pero, por otro lado, tengo dos ordenadores, uno de sobremesa en mi oficina y un portátil en casa. Tengo un teléfono celular que, a lo largo de los años, ha tenido que actualizarse cuatro veces diferentes en términos de comprar un modelo nuevo y desechar el anterior. Me ducho a diario y, dependiendo del trabajo físico y el ejercicio, a veces me ducho por segunda vez. Manejo un carro. Tomo un avión al menos una vez al mes para asistir a conferencias y reuniones y vuelo internacionalmente varias veces al año para visitar a mi familia. No tengo mucha ropa, pero mi ministerio y trabajo requieren un cierto estándar de vestimenta (que cumplo mínimamente).

Creo que puedo reclamar un estilo de vida sencillo, dado el lugar donde vivo y el trabajo que hago. Sin embargo, siendo realistas, si los siete (más) mil millones de personas en el mundo vivieran como yo, no habría suficientes recursos para sustentarnos. En pocas palabras, el mundo no puede sustentar a ocho mil millones de personas si todos viven como yo, y como lo hacemos la mayoría de nosotros en las partes más ricas de nuestro mundo. ¿Cuál es la respuesta?

Podemos hacernos sentir culpables a nosotros mismos y a los demás, aunque esto no es necesariamente útil. ¿Qué puede ser útil? No hay una respuesta fácil. Aquellos de nosotros que vivimos en las zonas más prósperas de nuestro mundo podemos hacer cambios, pero ¿podemos simplemente dejar de usar computadoras y teléfonos móviles? Podemos conservar agua, pero ¿podemos abandonar nuestros estándares actuales de higiene? Podemos conservar electricidad, pero ¿podemos simplemente dejar de conducir nuestros automóviles y oscurecer todos los edificios de nuestra ciudad por la noche? Podemos ser más escrupulosos sobre cuánto viajamos en avión, pero ¿podemos vivir sin viajar en avión? Podemos reducir lo que compramos en términos de exceso de comida, exceso de ropa y exceso de lujos y entretenimiento. Podemos reciclar, hacer abono y no utilizar bolsas de plástico, y todo esto, en conjunto, marcará la diferencia. De hecho, es necesario hacer todo esto. Sin embargo, por muy útil que sea esto, por sí solo no resolverá el problema.

Para Jane Goodall, más allá de estas cosas individuales, necesitamos hacer algunas cosas colectivas para resolver la amenaza existencial a este planeta. Goodall menciona tres: Primero, debemos aliviar la pobreza. Si hay personas que viven en una pobreza paralizante, es comprensible que talen el último árbol para cultivar alimentos o pescar el último pez porque están desesperadas por alimentar a sus familias. En segundo lugar, debemos eliminar la corrupción gubernamental y la avaricia corporativa. Sin un buen gobierno y una preocupación por el bien común en las empresas, es imposible resolver nuestros enormes problemas sociales y ambientales. Además, aquellos que por su propio beneficio se nieguen a afrontar el problema seguirán sin ser cuestionados. Por último, también debemos afrontar de manera realista la tensión entre nuestro estilo de vida y la población en constante crecimiento de este planeta.
Los consumidores irreflexivos son parte del problema, pero también lo somos el resto de nosotros, incluido yo, que nos imaginamos viviendo con sencillez.

(El padre oblato Ron Rolheiser es teólogo, maestro y autor galardonado. Se le puede contactar a través de su sitio web www.ronrolheiser.com. Facebook/ronrolheiser)

Surrendering to love

IN EXILE
By Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI

Perhaps all of Jesus’ invitations to us can be summarized in one word – surrender. We need to surrender to love.

But why is that difficult? Shouldn’t it be the most natural thing in the world? Isn’t our deepest desire a longing to find love and surrender to it?

True, our deepest longing is to surrender to love, but we have some deep innate resistances to give ourselves over in surrender. Here are a couple of examples:

At the Last Supper in John’s Gospel when Jesus tries to wash Peter’s feet, he meets a stiff resistance from Peter – Never! I will never let you wash my feet! What’s ironic here is that, perhaps more than anything else, Peter yearned precisely for that kind of intimacy with Jesus. Yet, when it’s offered, he resists.
Another example might be seen in the struggles of Henri Nouwen. Nouwen, one of the most gifted spiritual writers of our generation, enjoyed immense popularity. He published more than 50 books, was a much sought-after professor (tenured at both Harvard and Yale), received invitations daily to give talks and lectures around the world, and had many close friends.

Padre Ron Rolheiser, OMI

And yet, inside all that popularity and adulation, surrounded by many friends who loved him, he was unable to let that love give him any real sense of being loved or of being lovable. Instead, through most of his life he labored inside a deep anxiety which had him believe that he wasn’t lovable. On occasion this even landed him in clinical depression. And so, through most of his adult life, surrounded by so much love, he was haunted by a sense that he wasn’t loved, nor worthy of being loved. Moreover, he was a deeply sensitive person who more than anything else wanted to surrender to love. What held him back?

In his own words, he was crippled by a deep wound he couldn’t quite name and whose grip he couldn’t shake. This was true for most of his adult life. Eventually, he was able to free himself from his deep wound and surrender to love. However, it took a traumatic “death” experience for that to happen. Standing too close to the highway at a bus-stop one morning, he was struck by the mirror of a passing van which sent him flying. Rushed to a hospital, for some hours he hovered between life and death. While in that state, he had a very deep experience of God’s love for him. He returned to full consciousness and normal life as a profoundly changed man. Now, after experiencing God’s love for him, he could finally also surrender to human love in a way he had been incapable of previous to his “death” experience. All his subsequent books are marked by this conversion in love.

Why do we fight love? Why don’t we surrender more easily? The reasons are unique to each of us. Sometimes we are dealing with a deep wound that leaves us feeling unlovable. But sometimes our resistance has less to do with any wound than it has to do with how we are unconsciously fighting the very love we so painfully seek. Sometimes, like Jacob in the Bible, we are unconsciously wrestling with God (who is Love) and consequently unconsciously fighting love.

In the Bible story where Jacob wrestles all night with a man, we see that in this struggle he has no idea that he is wrestling with God and with love. In his mind, he is wrestling with a foe he needs to conquer. Eventually, when the darkness of the night gives way to more light, he sees what he is wrestling with – and it is a surprise and shock to him. He realizes he is fighting love itself. With that realization, he gives up struggling and instead clings to the very force he had been previously fighting, with the plea: “I will not let you go, until you bless me!”

This is the final lesson we need to learn in love: We wrestle for love with every talent, cunning and strength inside us. Eventually, if we are fortunate, we have an awakening. Some light, often a crippling defeat, shows us the true face of what we have been wrestling with and we realize that it’s not something to be conquered, but it’s the very love to which we have been longing to surrender.

For many of us, this will be the great awakening in our lives, a waking up to the fact that in all our ambitions and schemes to show the world how worthwhile and lovable we are, we are in unconscious ways fighting the very love to which we ultimately want to surrender. And, usually, as with Jacob in the biblical story, it will take the defeat of our own strength and a permanent limp before we realize what we are fighting against is really that to which we most want to surrender.

And this is surrender, not resignation, something we give ourselves over to rather than something that defeats us.

(Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser is a theologian, teacher and award-winning author. He can be contacted through his website www.ronrolheiser.com.)

Giving up on fear

IN EXILE
By Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI
A friend of mine shares this story. He was an only child. When he was in his late twenties, still single, building a successful career and living in the same city as his mother and father, his father died, leaving his mother widowed. His mother, who had centered her life on her family and on her son, was understandably devastated. Much of her world collapsed, she’d lost her husband, but she still had her son.

Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI

The next years were not always easy for her son. His mother had lost much of her world, save him, and he felt a heavy responsibility toward her. She lived for his visits. His days off and his vacation times had to be spent with her. Much as he loved his mother, it was a burden that prevented him from having the social life and relational freedom he yearned for, and it prevented him from making some career decisions that he would otherwise have made. He had to take care of his mother, to be there for her. As one can guess, their times together were sometimes a test of loyalty and duty for the son. But he did it faithfully, year after year. There was no one else his mother could lean on.

When his mother’s health began to decline, she sold her house and moved into a Seniors’ complex. Most times on his day off he would pick up his mother, take her for a drive in the country, and then take her to dinner before dropping her back at her mini apartment. One day on such an outing, driving along a country road in silence, his mother broke the quiet with words that both surprised him and, for the first time in a long time, had his full attention.

She shared words to this effect: Something huge has happened in my life. I’ve given up on fear. All my life I have been afraid of everything – of not measuring up, of not being good enough, of being boring, of being excluded, of being alone, of ending up alone, of ending up without any money or a place to live, of people talking about me behind my back. I’ve been afraid of my own shadow. Well, I’ve given up on fear. And why not? I’ve lost everything – my husband, my place in society, my home, my physical looks, my health, my teeth and my dignity. I’ve nothing left to lose anymore, and do you know something? It’s good! I’m not afraid of anything anymore. I feel free in a way I have never felt before. I’ve given up on fear.

For the first time in a long time, he began to listen closely to what his mother was saying. He also sensed something new in her, a new strength and a deeper wisdom from which he wished to drink. The next time he took her for a drive, he said to her: Mom, teach me that. Teach me how not to be afraid.
She lived for two more years and during those years he took her for drives in the country and for lunches and dinners together, and he drew something from her, from that new strength in her, that he had not been able to draw from before. When she eventually died and he lost her earthly presence, he could only describe what she had given him in those final years by using biblical terms: “My mother gave me birth twice, once from below and once from above.”

It’s not easy to give up on fear, nor to teach others how to do so. Fear has such a grip on us because for most of our lives we in fact have much to lose. So, it’s hard, understandably so, not to live with a lot of fear for most of our lives. Moreover, this is not a question of being mature or immature, spiritual or earthy. Indeed, sometimes the more mature and spiritual we are, the more we appreciate the preciousness of life, of health, of family, of friendship, of community – all of which have their own fragility and all of which we can lose. There are good reasons to be afraid.

It is no accident that this man’s mother was able to move beyond fear only after she had lost most everything in life. God and nature recognize that and have written it into the aging process. The aging process is calibrated to take us to a place where we can give up on fear because as we age and lose more and more of our health, our importance in the world, our physical attractiveness, our loved ones to death and our dignity, we have less and less to lose – and less and less to be afraid of.

This is one of nature’s last gifts to us, and living in a way that others see this new freedom in us can also be one of the last great gifts we leave behind with those we love.

(Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser is a theologian, teacher and award-winning author. He can be contacted through his website www.ronrolheiser.com.)

Divine permission for human fatigue

IN EXILE
By Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI
Someone once asked Therese of Lisieux if it was wrong to fall asleep while in prayer. Her answer: Absolutely not. A little child is equally pleasing to her parents, awake or asleep – probably more when asleep!

That’s more than a warm, cute answer. There’s a wisdom in her reply that’s generally lost to us, namely, that God understands the human condition and gives us sacred permission to be human, even in the face of our most important human and spiritual commitments.

This struck me recently while listening to a homily. The preacher, a sincere and dedicated priest, challenged us with the idea that God must always be first in our lives. So far so good. But then he shared how upset he gets whenever he hears people say things like: “Let’s go to the Saturday evening mass, to get it over with.” Or, when a celebrant says: “We will keep things short today, because the game starts at noon.” Phrases like that, he suggested, betray a serious weakness in our prayer lives. Do they?

Maybe yes, maybe no. Comments like that can issue out of laziness, spiritual indifference, or misplaced priorities. They might also simply be an expression of normal, understandable human fatigue – a fatigue which God, the author of human nature, gives us permission to feel.

There can be, and often is, a naïveté about the place of high energy and enthusiasm in our lives. For example, imagine a family who, with the best of intentions, decides that to foster family togetherness they agree to make their evening meal, every evening, a full-blown banquet, demanding everyone’s participation and enthusiasm and lasting for ninety minutes. Wish them luck! Some days this would foster togetherness and there would be a certain enthusiasm at the table; but, soon enough, this would be unsustainable in terms of their energy, and more than one of the family members would be saying silently, let’s get this over with, or can we cut it a little short tonight because the game is on at 7 o’clock. Granted, that could betray an attitude of disinterest; but, more likely, it would simply be a valid expression of normal fatigue.

Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI

None of us can sustain high energy and enthusiasm forever. Nor are we intended to. Our lives are a marathon, not a sprint. That’s why it is good sometimes to have lengthy banquets and sometimes to simply grab a hotdog and run. God and nature give us permission to sometimes say, let’s get it over with, and sometimes to rush things so as to not miss the beginning of the game.

Moreover, beyond taking seriously the normal ebb and flow of our energies, there is still another, even more important angle to this. Enthusiastic energy or lack of them don’t necessarily define meaning. We can do a thing because it means something affectively to us – or we can do something simply because it means something in itself, independent of how we feel about it on a given day. Too often, we don’t grasp this. For example, take the response people often give when explaining why they are no longer going to church services, “it doesn’t mean anything to me.” What they are blind to in saying this is the fact that being together in a church means something in itself, independent of how it feels affectively on any given day. A church service means something in itself, akin to visiting your aging mother. You do this, not because you are always enthusiastic about it or because it always feels good emotionally. No. You do it because this is your aging mother and that’s what God, nature and maturity call us to do.

The same holds true for a family meal together. You don’t necessarily go to dinner with your family each night with enthusiasm. You go because this is how families sustain their common life. There will be times when you do come with high energy and appreciate both the preciousness of the moment and the length of the dinner. But there will be other times when, despite a deeper awareness that being together in this way is important, you will be wanting to get this over with, or sneaking glances at your watch and calculating what time the game starts.

So, scripture advises, avoid Job’s friends. For spiritual advice in this area, avoid the spiritual novice, the over-pious, the anthropological naïve, the couple on their honeymoon, the recent convert and at least half of all liturgists and worship leaders. The true manual on marriage is never written by a couple on their honeymoon and the true manual on prayer is never written by someone who believes that we should be on a high all the time. Find a spiritual mentor who challenges you enough to keep you from selfishness and laziness, even as she or he gives you divine permission to be tired sometimes.

A woman or man at prayer is equally pleasing to God, enthusiastic or tired – perhaps even more when tired.

(Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser is a theologian, teacher and award-winning author. He can be contacted through his website www.ronrolheiser.com.)

The illusion of self-sufficiency

IN EXILE
By Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI

A number of years ago, I attended the funeral of a man who died at the age of ninety. From every indication, he had been a good man, solidly religious, the father of a large family, a man respected in the community, and a man with a generous heart. However, he had also been a strong man, a gifted man, a natural leader, someone to whom a group would naturally look to take the reins and lead. Hence, he held a number of prominent positions in the community. He was a man very much in charge.

One of his sons, a Catholic priest, gave the homily at his funeral. He began with these words: Scripture tells us that the sum of a man’s life is seventy years, eighty for those who are strong. Now our dad lived for ninety years. Why the extra twenty years? Well, it’s no mystery. He was too strong and too much in charge of things to die at seventy or eighty. It took God an extra twenty years to mellow him out. And it worked. The last ten years his life were years of massive diminishment. His wife died, and he never got over that. He had a stroke which put him into assisted living and that was a massive blow to him. Then he spent the last years of his life with others having to help him take care of his basic bodily needs. For a man like him, that was humbling.

But this was the effect of all that. It mellowed him. In those last years, whenever you visited him, he would take your hand and say, “help me.” He hadn’t been able to say those words since he was five years old and able to tie his own shoelaces. By the time he died, he was ready. When he met Jesus and St. Peter on the other side, I’m sure he simply reached for a hand and said, “help me.” Ten and twenty years ago, he would, I’m sure, have given Jesus and Peter some advice as to how they might run the pearly gates more efficiently.

That’s a parable that speaks deeply and directly about a place we must all eventually come to, either through proactive choice or by submission to circumstance; we all must eventually come to a place where we accept that we are not self-sufficient, that we need help, that we need others, that we need community, that we need grace, that we need God.

Why is that so important? Because we are not God and we become wise and more loving when we realize and accept that. Classical Christian theologians defined God as self-sufficient being, and highlight that only God is self-sufficient. God alone has no need of anything beyond Himself. Everything else, everything that is not God, is defined as contingent, as not self-sufficient, as needing something beyond itself to bring it into existence and to keep it in existence every second of its being.

That can sound like abstract theology, but ironically it’s little children who get it, who have an awareness of this. They know that they cannot provide for themselves and that all comes to us as gifts. They know they need help. However, not long after they learn to tie their own shoelaces this awareness begins to fade and as they grow into adolescence and then adulthood, particularly if they are healthy, strong and successful, they begin to live with the illusion of self-sufficiency. I provide for myself!

And, that in fact serves them well in terms of making their way in this world. But it doesn’t serve truth, community, love or the soul. It’s an illusion, the greatest of all illusions. None of us will enter deeply into community as long as we nurse the illusion of self-sufficiency, when we are still saying, I don’t need others! I choose who and what I let into my life!

G.K. Chesterton once wrote that familiarity is the greatest of all illusions. He’s right, and what we are most familiar with is taking care of ourselves and believing that we are sufficient onto ourselves. As we know, this serves us well in terms of getting ahead in this life. However, fortunate for us, though painful, God and nature are always conspiring together to teach us that we are not self-sufficient. The process of maturing, aging and eventually dying is calibrated to teach us, whether we welcome the lesson or not; that we are not in charge, that self-sufficiency is an illusion. Eventually for all of us there will come a day when, as it was with us before we could tie our own shoelaces, we will have to reach out for a hand and say, “help me.”

The philosopher Eric Mascall has an axiom that says we are neither wise nor mature as long as we take life for granted. We become wise and mature precisely when we take it as granted – by God, by others, by love.

(Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser is a theologian, teacher and award-winning author. He can be contacted through his website www.ronrolheiser.com.)

No lasting city

IN EXILE
By Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI

Scripture tells us that in this life we have no lasting city. True enough. But, it seems, we also don’t have a lasting house, school, neighborhood, town, zip code address, or most anything else. Eventually nothing lasts.

Perhaps my case isn’t typical, but a lot of things in my life haven’t lasted. My grandparents were immigrants, Russian-Germans, moving to the Canadian prairies and being among the first farmers to break the soil there at the beginning of the 1900s. They were young, so too was life then on the prairies, and their generation planted new farms, schools, towns and cities across the great plains of Canada and the USA. I was born into the second generation of all that – but just as urbanization and other changes were already beginning to cause the disappearance of a lot of what they had built.

So, here’s my story of having no lasting city. The elementary school I went to closed after I’d finished the sixth grade. We were bused to a bigger centralized school and our old school building was carted away. Nothing remains today to indicate there once was a school there. The new school I attended closed several years after I’d graduated. The building itself was razed and today the entire former campus is part of a farmer’s field with only a small plaque to indicate there once was vibrant life there, with hundreds of young voices filling the air with energy. That school was a couple of miles out of a small town and that town itself has now completely disappeared, without a single building left.

I went from high school to an Oblate novitiate house situated in the heart of the Qu’Appelle valley, a beautiful stately building on a lake. Several years after I’d graduated from there, the building was sold and soon afterwards was destroyed in a fire. Only an empty stretch of prairie sits there now. From there, I moved to another seminary, a magnificent old building (formerly the Government House for the Northwest Territories) and spent six wonderful years there. Again, several years after I’d graduated, the building was abandoned, and it too was eventually destroyed by a fire.

Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI

From there I moved to Newman Theological College in Edmonton where I spent the next fifteen years. Newman College had a beautiful campus on the outskirts of the city, but several years after I’d left, the campus was expropriated by the city to build a ring road and all its buildings were razed. From there, I moved to a wonderfully homey building, the Oblate Provincial residence in Saskatoon. Several years later, after I’d moved out, that building too was razed and nothing remains where it once stood. And, while all this was happening, the little town to which our family was connected (for mail, for groceries, for services, for identity) became a ghost town with no inhabitants, all its buildings shuttered.
Eventually, I moved to Oblate School of Theology in Texas to live in a welcoming little house designated for the president of the school. However, after a few years, the land it was on was needed for a new seminary and that house too was razed. Finally, most painful of all, two years ago, our family house, our home for more than 70 years, was sold and the new owners (sensitive enough to ask our family’s permission to do so) burned the old house to the ground.

That’s a lot of roots disappearing: my elementary school, my high school, the town our family was connected to, both seminaries from which I graduated, the college where I first taught, both Oblate houses I’d spent wonderful years within, and the family house – all gone, razed to the ground, nothing left to go back to.

What does that do to you? Well, there’s nostalgia, yes. How I would again love to walk into any of those buildings, feel what they once meant to me and bask in memories. None of that can happen. Each of these is a mini death, leaving a part of my soul rootless. On the other hand, more positively, all that unwanted letting go is helping prepare me for an ultimate letting go, when I will be facing my own death, and not just some haunting nostalgia.

As well, this has taught me something else of substance. Buildings and houses may disappear, but home is not contingent on them. Rene Fumoleau, a poet among the Dene tribes, shares how he once visited a family the day after their house had been destroyed by fire and had this conversation with a young girl:

The next day I visited the burned out family.
What could I say after such a tragedy?
I tried with the ten-year old daughter: ‘Joan, you must feel terrible without home.’
The young girl knew better: ‘Oh, we still have our home,
But we have no house to put on it.” (Home – Here I Sit)
Yes, we can still have a home even without our former house on it.

(Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser is a theologian, teacher and award-winning author. He can be contacted through his website www.ronrolheiser.com.)

The taste of banter and wine

IN EXILE
By Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI

Elizabeth Poreba ends a poem, No Good Company, with these words:
I’ve got no banter,
I’m all judgement and edges, an edgy white lady
Wondering what to do, what to do next
As in Jesus is coming, look busy.


At the wedding feast in Cana, Mary tells Jesus – they have no wine – asking him to create some. What do wine and banter have in common? Both bring a needed extra into our lives.

Let’s start with wine. Wine is not a protein, something the body needs to be nourished and kept alive, part of an essential diet. It’s an extra that provides something special for one’s health. Taken with the right spirit and in moderation, wine can help lift the mood, lighten the heart and warm the conversation, even as it helps (at least for the moment) lessen some of the tensions among us. It’s a grease that can help make a conversation, a family dinner or a social gathering flow more pleasantly.

Banter? Well, like wine, if taken with the right spirit and in moderation, it can also lift the mood, lighten the heart, warm a conversation and lessen tensions at a gathering. Classical Greek thought suggested that love has six components: Eros – emotional and sexual attraction; mania – emotional obsession; asteismos – playfulness and banter; storge – care and solicitousness; pragma – practical arrangement and accommodation; philia – friendship; and agape – altruism.

Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI

Normally, when we think of love, we think of each of these components, except the aspect of banter and playfulness. Our romantic selves identify love very much with emotional obsession and sexual attraction. Our religious and moral selves identify love with care, friendship and altruism; and our pragmatic selves identify it with practical arrangement. Few speak of the place and importance of banter or playfulness, of healthy teasing, of humor, but these are often the grease that keeps the others flowing more smoothly.

Here’s an example: For all my adult life, I’ve lived in various religious houses, in community with other vowed religious (in my case, men). We don’t get to pick with whom we live, but are assigned to a community, along with everyone else who lives there. And we come together with our different backgrounds, different personalities and different eccentricities. This can be a formula for tension and yet, for the most part, it works, is pleasant and provides life-giving support and fellowship. What makes it work? Why don’t we end up killing each other? How do we live (for the most part) pleasantly together beyond our differences, immaturities and egos?

Well, there’s a common mission that keeps us working together and, most importantly, there’s regular common prayer that helps us see each other in a better light. But, very importantly, there is banter, playfulness, healthy teasing and humor which, like wine at a table, help take the edge off things and ease the tension inherent in our differences. A community that doesn’t stay light-hearted through banter, playfulness and healthy teasing will eventually become everything that light-hearted is not, namely, heavy, drab, full of tension and pompous. In every healthy community I’ve lived in, one of the things that made it healthy (and pleasant to come home to) was banter, playfulness, loving teasing and humor. These are rich wines that can enliven the table of any family and any community.

This, of course, like drinking wine, can be overdone and be a way of avoiding harder conversations that need to be had. As well, banter can keep us relating to each other in ways that actually hinder genuine community. Humor, banter, the jokester and the prankster need to know when enough is enough and when serious conversation needs to happen. The risk of overdoing banter is real, though perhaps the greater risk lies in trying to live together in its absence.

Banter, playfulness, loving teasing and humor don’t just help us relate to each other beyond our differences, they also help deflate the pomposity that is invariably the child of over-seriousness. They help keep our families and communities grounded and pleasant.

I grew up in a large family, with each of us having strong personalities and plenty of faults; yet save for very few occasions, our house, which was physically too small for so large a family, was pleasant to be in because it was perennially filled with banter, playfulness, humor and healthy teasing. We seldom had wine, but we had banter! When I look back on what my family gave me, I am deeply grateful for many gifts: faith, love, safety, trust, support, education, moderation and moral sensitivity. But it also taught me banter, playfulness, healthy teasing and humor. No small gift.

At the wedding feast in Cana, Jesus’ mother noticed that, even though a wedding celebration was happening, something wasn’t right. Was it a heaviness? An over-seriousness? Was it an unhealthy pomposity? Was there a noticeable tension in the room? Whatever. Something was missing, so she goes to Jesus and says: “Son, they have no banter!”

(Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser is a theologian, teacher and award-winning author. He can be contacted through his website www.ronrolheiser.com.)