Teach our children

It's sad, ridiculous and alarming all at once how sexualized the world has become. Everywhere you turn, look or tune into, your senses are assaulted with images that are designed to evoke a base, prurient response.

Celebrities indulge in flesh parades taken to the heights of Gaga-ish bizarreness which adoring fans try their best to ape. Men and women eyeball each other as they would a juicy hunk of meat and make sex the currency of love.

Sex has been commoditized to the point that pornography and aberrant sexual behaviour are accepted as normal: where sexual promiscuity is endorsed and chastity denigrated.

Worst of all is when children are taken advantage of while their parents look on approvingly; often the progenitors of the early sexualization of their children. They hand their children on a platter to paedophiles and sexual predators when they allow their pre-pubescent children to dress and act as if they were navigating a singles' convention.

When I was a young girl, my mother refused to let me wear clothes she deemed inappropriate for my age. Nothing too revealing or adult; and no nail polish or make-up until I was sixteen or so. Leading by example she was (and still is) always appropriately attired. Both she and my father made sure I behaved and comported myself properly.

Although I chafed against the conservative ways of my parents then, today I am glad that they were true guardians of my innocence and childhood.

Who will protect the children now when parents themselves don't even know the difference between right and wrong and instead are fiercely proud of having their children sexually exploited for the sake of money and fame?

We have lost a sense of respect for the sanctity of our bodies. We treat our sexuality and our human dignity as bargain basement merchandise - shop soiled and cheap.

It pains me when children are not taught the proper reverence for their minds, hearts and bodies, that their identity is intrinsically precious, not to be exploited, because they are the very image of God.

Every child deserves to enjoy the innocence of childhood and to have it kept unsullied for as long as possible.

Every teen deserves to be respected and valued for his and her being and not manipulated into living out someone else's dream or fantasy, be it parent, peer or predatory stranger.

It is the responsibility of every adult to protect every child in the world: to teach the young the true meaning and full expression of love so as to eradicate under aged sex and teenage pregnancy; to destroy the ever-exploding child sex trade and reclaim the glory of love as espoused by Jesus Christ.

Teach your children and grandchildren is something Moses reminded the Israelites (Deuteronomy 4:9) as crucial for the well-being of future generations. This piece of advice applies today, more than ever.

We must begin first with ourselves. By educating ourselves on what is right and wrong, good and bad. Say no to sexual immorality. Make a stand against a world with constantly shifting boundaries of relativism.

Watch how we live: what we do for entertainment, who we hang out with and with what do we feed our minds. Like Ezra (in chapter 7 verse 10), if we devote our lives to studying, obeying and teaching the laws and decrees of the Lord, we will be able to bring the fullness of Christian life into our own lives and that of the people around us.

And then we can teach all children well and equip them with the values and skills to change the world we live in for the better. 

Befriending God

Someone asked the question last night, "How do I know I have a personal friendship with God?" for Father David had stressed to us that Christian love is personal friendship with God and if we did not remember anything else from this course, he wanted us to at least retain this Aquinas gem.

Father D.'s answer got a little cheem (esoteric), or maybe I was tired, but I did kinda get it, even though I would not be able to tell you what he said.

I got it because I do have a personal friendship with God. How do I know this? Because He has shown me He loves me in very concrete ways, in ways that when I connect the dots backwards, I see His hand in the twists and turns of my life's journey.

To honour this friendship that holds first place in my heart, I have tried my best to give Him carte blanche, to allow Him to lead and to thus infuse my faith, hope and love with grace, unmerited and divine.

And He has. How else would I have been able step out of my comfort zone and be radical in my life choices and succeed?

I am happy for I feel I am living my life meaningfully, as it should be lived. I am free to be who I am and I like that I have let go of fears and distortions that held me captive for so long.

Best of all, when I am unsure or confused, I know I can make the right choices for me when I abandon myself to His wisdom.

He talks to me through the inner workings of my heart. I am a person who is led very much by intuition, and so when I feel strongly about something, I know it is from Him.

This does not mean I go by emotion alone for my decisions in life are a collective effort and integration of my reason, will and emotion. And they are borne out by the good fruit that follow (else it ain't from God but just voices in my head).

I spend a lot of time and psychic energy seeking truth, trying to understand and experience first-hand why dogma and Church teachings are beautiful, God-inspired ways of life. Living it and liking it more and more.

Yesterday at lunch S. said to me, "You working on getting to heaven?" when I said I was going reverse carolling in December.

The answer to her question is no for I don't really give a hoot about going to heaven. Well yeah, I do want to get to heaven but my chief motivation for being good or doing good is not spiritual brownie points: it is my relationship with Jesus and pushing it to a new and deeper level, all the time.

My singular prayer in life is that I should always be able to see His face and hear His voice. This requires purity of heart, a purity I once lost, and it left me lost and desolate for a long time. I was in hellish limbo and I don't ever want to go there again.

Purity of heart demands that I choose not only good over evil but better over good, and even if it flies in the face of convention and comes at great personal cost.

Having regained the ability to know what He wants on such a lively and intimate level, I will do my utmost to maintain this friendly status.

In FB speak, I will never defriend Him.

Healthy fear

Last night during our Bible Timeline discussion, D. commented that he was musing recently how he could love God more?

We were covering the books of Kings, Daniel and Ezekiel and the destruction of both the northern and the southern kingdoms due to the rejection of God's covenant by the people.

The over-riding message as we journey through the Old Testament is that God wants to love us and forgive us but the refusal to respond in love and acceptance is reflective not just of peoples of old but of us today.

Jeff Cavins asked a very incisive question at the end of his talk. We may have returned from exile in that we are regular church-going and even active parishioners, but have we truly returned to God in our openness of heart. Are we completely in sync with God and His ways or are there still false gods and petty, pernicious sin in our lives?

I think that D. has the right idea. If we seek to show God how much we love Him all the time in every little thing we do, if we continue to look ahead and see how we can make our dreams His dreams for us, if we say yes every morning to let the Spirit guide our thoughts, actions and words through the day, then, perhaps, we will have shown we have walked out of exile into the Kingdom of Heaven on earth.

It is hard to remain single-minded and faithful all the time in all things. Even those among us whom we consider saint-like will demur from being thought so, for sin is all too accessible and convenient.

As Jesus did, so must we. Pray constantly. Unceasingly. Night and Day.

A deliberate act of integrating heart, mind and soul will earn us the virtues of faith, hope and charity, virtues that can only be bestowed to us by God alone, given their  theological nature.

Virtues that will help us crack the happiness code and be as close to perfection as we'll ever get.

My SD recently gifted me with a way of praying: Place your disappointments, weaknesses and sins in your outstretched palms and present them to the Lord, asking that He accept what is offered sincerely, humbly begging for transformation.

This attitude of prayer is a sign of spiritual well-being, for fear of the Lord, a reverential love and worship of the Creator, will be our saving grace through the rigours of life.

It is what led Abraham from barren marriage to precious son who sired a nation, a son whom he was willing to sacrifice out of obedience.

It is what made Jesus drink the excruciating cup of death in order to fulfil his mission of saving the world.  

So to pull my thoughts together, for me, the ability to love God more is to nourish a healthy fear of the Lord that will restore and refresh me as I pray, pray and pray.

Monogamy fidelity

Seventy-two days. That's all it took for Kim Kardashian to file for divorce after her wedding.

While I am not about to comment on what led to her decision, this latest crash and burn is emblematic of the state and institution of marriage.

Forever is as short as 55 hours, as Britney Spears in 2004 would tell you.

Given the brevity of many marriages out there, I used to wonder why people bothered getting married. 

Was it the superficial, romantic daydream of a white wedding fairy tale? 

Or is it simply a true human desire that is within every man and woman: a human requirement for the transcendental beauty of nuptial love, a love that is faithful, unconditional and will not be withdrawn on a whim and can withstand the test of time.

How else would procreation and parenthood be viable seeing as children are pretty much the joint responsibility of parents spanning 18 years or more.      

Pope John Paul II identifies the root of this high incidence of broken vows in modern times as a crisis of commitment wherein “frequently lies a corruption of the idea and the experience of freedom”.  

First, we are spoilt for choice, and, by choice.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s great to have the freedom to choose, but when the will to freedom supersedes wisdom and good sense and speaks only of selfish, immature urgings, then the process of choosing becomes one that is predicated on the idea of happiness as being the ability to choose among many options.

Commitment thus becomes an anathema to this misguided idea of freedom. We like what commitment brings to the table, the unconditional and faithful love, but we don’t want to play by its rule of reciprocity.      

Does freedom of choice truly lead to happiness? Perhaps, but it is only a very transient version of happiness that seems not even to last the honeymoon period. And surely we want more than that.

In the meanwhile, families are being torn apart and children are growing up in single parent homes only to perpetuate the lessons learnt at their parents’ knees, lessons of broken promises, infidelity and selfishness.

We have forgotten that we are able to synthesize happiness; that it is not found in material things or dream circumstances but in accepting the limitations of life and using these so-called constraints as a platform to happiness.

When we accept conditions such as race, gender or culture as part of our identity, these become a springboard toward self-actualization and fulfilment. 

The same can be said for accepting the strengths and imperfections of the spouse you marry.   

We would do well to mimic wild Canadian geese. David's Quammen writes in The Flight of The Iguana that these migratory birds “embody liberty, grace, and devotion, combining these three contradictory virtues with a seamless elegance” that humans often “only espouse”.

I would like to suggest that it is not just the geese but humans that have an “ecological mandate for fidelity”.

And that free will has somehow caused humanity to misplace its own human nature and adopt practices that are actually hostile and poisonous. 

Geese can’t afford our frivolity for their survival depends on “a life of mutual reliance in permanent twosomes”, a commitment brought about by their “physiology and anatomy”. 

Unfortunately for humans, the bid for survival and the perpetuation of the species is not so urgent or critical and also involves the luxury of love as an emotion and not purely just a decision.

Love is a glorious thing and should be at the heart of every marriage. However, it will be selfless commitment that carries a marriage through its rough patches and enables love to retain its vibrancy while growing in depth.

When love becomes a decision to be committed and faithful, happiness can be found at the end of the rainbow, which, incidentally, is symbolic of kept promises.  

Quammen ends his essay on geese with a quote from Marguerite Duras that I would like to end with as well:

“Fidelity, enforced and unto death, is the price you pay for the kind of love you never want to give up, for someone you want to hold forever, tighter and tighter, whether he's close or far away, someone who becomes dearer to you the more you've sacrificed for his sake. This sacrificial relationship is precisely the one that exists in the Christian church between pain and absolution. It can survive outside the church, but it retains its ecclesiastical form. There can be no more violent, and beautiful, strategy than this for seizing time, for restoring eternity to life. ” 

Caritas crazy

I think about love all the time for it's the only thing worth thinking about in life. One might even say I am obsessed with it for it is my ethos in life.

So what is it about love that is so compelling? The simple truth is I am made for love - as is every other person on this planet - and therefore it is part of who I am, as I live and breathe.

Seeing as love is essential  for my well-being I've spent years trying to get it right. And with the help of my Christian heritage, that I have fully embraced only in recent years, I am in a good 'lurve' place.

It hasn't been easy to find the balance and I've made quite a few wrong turns and taken a number of painful tumbles, but I have finally found the secret. It lies with one person: Jesus Christ.

By choosing to love as He did, in a selfless manner, I have found fulfilment and a deep joy that has set me free from desperate bids for love that portend only heartache and enslavement.

Instead Christ has led me to look for, and find love in all the right places.

In Deus Caritas Est, God is Love, Pope Benedict XVI proposes that love takes on a "multiplicity of meanings" that is much more than love between man and woman, so often thought of as the "epitome of love" and sought so avidly and single-mindedly by most people.

Love has an infinite number of flavours and textures but if we insist on hankering after one particular incarnation of love, nuptial in nature, then we have impoverished our life immensely and limited our capacity to savour the voluptuous, soul-satisfying and diverse fruits of love.

The Pope goes on to say it is when "body and soul are intimately united", we are able to attain "full stature" and eros from undisciplined intoxication its "true grandeur". Love becomes an experience beyond a physical high.

"Love is indeed “ecstasy”, not in the sense of a moment of intoxication, but rather as a journey, an ongoing exodus out of the closed inward-looking self towards its liberation through self-giving, and thus towards authentic self-discovery and indeed the discovery of God."

These words of Pope Ben resonate within me for my own journey has take on such an outward looking, Biblical turn of loving God and others. This perfect marriage of eros and agape.

The conscious decision to give of my self that is not merely about self-sacrifice or cheerless deprivation but about doing and being all the things that make me feel good about myself and all the things I would wish on myself from others but do not demand from them.

It is an exodus from ego-centricity to happiness, inner peace and self-transcendence made possible only through attempts to be more and more like Christ.

Why? Because I love the way He loves me and I want to share this incredibly precious love I have found with Him with the rest of the world.

Love has become my enabler, to make my existence a rich and exciting one.

Every day affords me opportunities to make a difference, not just within my immediate circle, but beyond. To enlarge my world to include those who are the "least of my brethren". 

The call to respond is unceasing for poverty, suffering and injustice are ugly realities of life. If I believe in the equal dignity of all humanity, then I must act accordingly to address whatever I see wrong in the world.

For the Church, diakonia or the ministry of charity "is part of her nature, an indispensable expression of her very being" according to Pope Benedict.   

Therefore, as a member of Church, "God's family in the world", I have an imperative to ensure no one "goes without the necessities of life", necessities I have in abundance, be it financial stability or emotional well-being.

Whatever I have received that is good and beautiful, I must pay it forward if I am to be true to myself and to honour my Father who created me.

Last Friday evening, A. spoke about "the call within the call" - what has God specifically called each of us to be and to do, that goes beyond a  surface understanding of vocation and touches on developing a personal spirituality.

Answering the call within the call is responding in love to God to love others in a way that is unique to who I am. It involves cultivating an interior openness and humility, and lots of prayer.

These dispositions, Pope Benedict also stresses, are vital when reaching out to others with a helping hand.

And so, as I continue to make sense of how I am to love in the world - to misquote Descartes: I love, therefore I am - I hearken to the Catholic Church's social teachings as the consummate guide.

I'd like to end with this beautiful invitation to love from the Pope's first encyclical letter, Deus Caritas Est:

"Faith, hope and charity go together. Hope is practised through the virtue of patience, which continues to do good even in the face of apparent failure, and through the virtue of humility, which accepts God's mystery and trusts him even at times of darkness.

"Faith tells us that God has given his Son for our sakes and gives us the victorious certainty that it is really true: God is love! It thus transforms our impatience and our doubts into the sure hope that God holds the world in his hands and that, as the dramatic imagery of the end of the Book of Revelation points out, in spite of all darkness he ultimately triumphs in glory.

"Faith, which sees the love of God revealed in the pierced heart of Jesus on the Cross, gives rise to love.

"Love is the light—and in the end, the only light—that can always illuminate a world grown dim and give us the courage needed to keep living and working.

"Love is possible, and we are able to practise it because we are created in the image of God. To experience love and in this way to cause the light of God to enter into the world."