Matthew 5: 21-37. Sigh.  Do I really have to preach on this reading again this year?  This isn’t exactly my favorite reading because, quite honestly, it makes me uncomfortable.  Jesus seems to be hold some pretty high standards for moral behavior that are hard to measure up to, and I often walk away from this reading feeling bad, as do a lot of people in my experience.  The word Gospel means “good news” and yet a lot of people who hear this word on Sunday morning don’t feel like they have come away hearing the “good news”.  They come away often feeling sad, inadequate and paralyzed.  Let’s take a look at the verse that is the most troublesome – the verse about divorce.  It says “whoever divorces his wife commits adultery and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery”.  We live in a modern society where 50% of marriages end in divorce.  And what of the 50% who don’t get divorced?  Just because people stay married doesn’t mean they are happy.  As we know, people stay in unhealthy relationships for all kinds of reasons – social pressure, economics, kids, religious upbringing etc.  So, marriage at best probably has a 25% percent success rate.  That means that 75% of people who come to church on this Sunday have the experience of being chastised by the words of Jesus and experience a growing distance between themselves and God.

And yet, I think it is precisely this feeling of distance that makes me think there is some gap between what the words say and what we hear.  Because if you look at the life of Jesus as a whole, you see that it was precisely the people whose lives were the most troubled and whose relationships were the most fractured that were the most drawn to Jesus.  Those people never felt chastised or repelled by Jesus, but rather, they felt loved and drawn in.  There is the story of the woman at the well who had had five husbands who came alone to the well in the hottest part of the day rather than in the early cool hours of the morning with the other women because of her shame.  Yet, she was drawn to Jesus when she purposely avoided everyone else because the judgement she felt from everyone else, she did not feel from Jesus.  Then there was Mary Magdalene who washed the feet of Jesus with a valuable perfume and dried his feet with her hair when Jesus was dining at the home of a well-known Pharisee.  Mary had a reputation as a sinner and the so-called “good” people treated her in a way that she would never forget it.  But not Jesus.  Jesus said that she was capable of the greatest love precisely because she had received great forgiveness.  And then there was Zacchaeus, the marginalized tax collector who climbed the tree to see who Jesus was.  He was friendless and lonely because he was viewed as a thief.  When Jesus spoke to him, Zacchaeus didn’t feel sad or ashamed.  To the contrary, he felt so deeply loved that the only way He could think of to respond was with unprecedented generosity. He said,  “Half of my belongings I give to the poor and if I have stolen anything from anyone I shall repay them four times”.    

We all have some things in our life that we are not proud of, that we are ashamed of, things we would do differently if we could have a second go at them. Religion often makes us feel worse about these things.  Other people in our life often make us feel worse.  But not Jesus.  A true encounter with the person of Jesus, makes us feel better about ourselves even with all of our failings.  A true encounter with Jesus leaves us feeling understood, relieved, hopeful, grateful, forgiven and loved.

Jesus never kicked anybody while they were down.  Jesus did challenge people, for sure.  But his harshest words were reserved for the so-called “good” people – those who were convinced of their own righteousness.  His harsh words were meant for those in power who used their power to benefit themselves at the expense of others.  And when we keep that in mind, Jesus comment about divorce looks a little different to us.  Because today a divorce is often a breakdown of a relationship.  In Jesus day, a divorce was often an abuse of power.  For one, only men could request a divorce and they often did for trivial reasons.  The men would manipulate the law to their favor and end up leaving the woman homeless and destitute.  And it was this that was abhorrent to Jesus – the powerful taking advantage of the powerless.

So we know what the text is not about.  It’s not about equating the divorces of Jesus day with the divorces of today.  What the text is about I much larger than the couple of individual verses that people today get stuck on because they don’t resonate with our lived experience.  (aside: I believe that faith should always be experiential.  Seems foolish to believe something just because somebody makes a claim or because it is written in a holy book.  Belief needs to be verified through lived experience).

What today’s text is about is distinguishing between the spirit of the Law verses the letter of the law. Internals verses externals. Having the heart in the right place is more important than having the external actions in the right place. In Catholic Social Ethics they often speak a lot about primacy of “intention”.  Intention is more important than the outcome.  If your intention is to do good, but you end up doing harm, you are still in the right because your intention was good.  And it also works the other way – if you do the right things but do them for the wrong reasons, you are still in the wrong.

How often we delude ourselves about the true motivations of our actions.  We may give very noble reasons for the things we choose to do or not to do, but oftentimes the “good reasons” are not the “real reasons.”  If you are a pacifist because you don’t believe in violence, that’s great.  If you are a pacifist because you are a coward, that’s not great.  The outcome is the same, but the intent is what makes it a moral act or not.  If you don’t drive a car because you want to protect the environment, that’s great.  If you don’t drive a car because you are simply afraid of driving, well maybe that is not so great.  Maybe you and the world would be better if you burned a little gas but conquered your fears in the process. And my personal favorite is when people speak about surrendering to God’s will.  Even this noble act can be done for the wrong reasons. If you are surrendering to God’s will because you want to let go of your own ego, that’s great.  If you speak of surrendering to God’s will because you simply lack confidence in yourself and you don’t want the responsibility of making hard decisions, you just want God to tell you what to do, well that’s a different story.

Jesus was always more concerned with the underlying cause of things than the external results.  He was concerned primarily with the underlying motivations and intentions.  He was more focused on the internal, the spiritual.  He criticized the religious leaders of his day for going out of their way to make everything look good on the outside while they neglected the inside, saying they were like “white washed tombs” that looked nice and clean on the outside but inside were filled with spiritual death and decay.  He said it was like cleaning the outside of a cup but neglecting the inside.   When Jesus healed people he always worked from the inside out starting with the soul before moving on to mind and body.  Because, he said, a good tree does not bear bad fruit.  If the tree is good, the fruit will be good.  You don’t pick figs from thorn bushes.

Because, here’s the thing – everything we see in the external world has its origin in the spiritual.  Everything that we can see and touch in the physical world once began as a thought or feeling in some one’s mind or heart.  By the time the idea or feeling or intent becomes manifest in the material world, the work is already complete.  By the time a couple walks down the aisle at their wedding, the marriage has already happened over many long conversations, long walks and deep sharing with one another.  Walking down the aisle is just an external recognition of something that has been there for a while.  Same with divorce.  By the time a couple actually has the divorce papers in hand, the divorce has already happened long ago. And so Jesus’ invitation is to be mindful of the most subtle movements of the spirit long before the fruits start to appear.  As the saying goes, “Beware your thoughts for they will become your actions.  Beware your actions for they will become your habits.  Beware your habits for they will become your character.  Beware your character for it will become your destiny.”  And that is what this reading is ultimately about.  It’s not enough to have a commandment that says, “Thou Shalt not murder” if we are inattentive to the anger from which it comes.  It’s not enough to have a commandment that says “Thou shalt not commit adultery” if we aren’t honest about desires in our hearts that lead to it. 

Once upon a time there was a martial arts master who had three sons.  He put a vase above the door to his house and called his youngest son to come home.  The son arrived at the door, opened it, and the vase came crashing on his head. Before the vase hit the ground, he drew his sword and sliced it in two. The father put another vase above the door and called to his second son.  The second son opened the door, noticed the vase falling, and stepped aside and caught the vase which he then handed to his father, unbroken.  The father put the vase back on top of the door and called to his eldest son.  The son arrived and paused in front of the door, and before opening, reached up and carefully took down the vase and handed it to his father.  The father praised his youngest son for his quick reflexes.  He praised his second son for his quick thinking.  But his highest praise was reserved for his eldest son, whom he praised for his mindfulness.

And so the invitation of Scripture today to recognize the primacy of the spiritual, the primacy of intent and underlying motives, and the mindfulness that makes this recognition possible.

Moving can be a pain in the butt.  I have moved myself and other people enough times over the years that I am well familiar with just how tedious and overwhelming the moving process can be – all of the pre-sorting and organizing, deciding what to take and what to give away, what can be recycled and repurposed and what has to be thrown out, what can be put in the trash can, left on the curb, and what has to be taken to the city dump.  What might I need to save that will be useful to me in the future? (This one I’m never good at – the moment I decide to throw something away is when I end up needing it), weeks of begging for boxes from my place of employment to do the packing, wrapping all of the dishes in paper so they don’t break, labeling all the boxes so you can find stuff again, enlisting the help of friends for heavy lifting and the things you absolutely can’t do yourself but also not wanting to impose on the friendship, finding a way to transport all your stuff to the new place, and when you are finally at your new place you have to do it all again, in reverse. 

And then, Just when you feel like you are making progress and may even be ahead of schedule, it happens.  A card, or photograph, or a letter slips on to the floor as you move a box.  Something that has been buried for years suddenly triggers a flood of memories that leaves you sitting teary-eyed cross-legged on the floor.  For two hours.  Just remembering.  Has that ever happened to anyone?

Someone once told me, “You don’t know how rich you are until you have to move your blessings.”

We often forget how rich we are simply because we often don’t take the time to unpack the blessings that we keep stored in a box on the shelf out of sight and out of mind. And one of the great tragedies of life is that often we don’t appreciate what we have until it’s gone.  And the great paradox of it all is that it’s often the things that we rely on the most that we take most for granted.

Last year a water main broke on my street and the city had to tear up the road to fix it, leaving the residents in my area without water for 24 hrs.  Just 24 hours, but let me tell you, that was one long 24 hours.  No running water, no toilet. 

Usually once or twice a year the electricity goes out and all of a sudden I can’t cook, can’t see, can’t do laundry, can’t listen to the radio, etc. and I become acutely aware of how hopelessly dependent I am on something I rarely give a second thought to.  I also become aware of just how fragile a creature I really am in this world all by myself and how much I need other people and their help just to survive. Turns out I’m not as independent and self-sufficient as I like to think. 

It doesn’t even take something that big to rattle my cage and get me upset.  Any little disruption in my routine or habits will do it.  I’m usually reminded of this every Christmas.  The one day of the year where all the stores are closed – the one day – and wouldn’t you know it, that is the day I absolutely have to have something from the store that can’t wait until tomorrow.  I can’t even survive a single day with the stores being closed.  Guess I’m not as tough as a thought.  Turn off my water, my electricity and close the store for a day and you’ll have me crying in a corner.  Don’t even get me started on losing my internet connection.

The things that we are most dependent on are the things we often take the most for granted until there is a problem.  When was the last time you thought about your breathing? Or swallowing? Hearing? Seeing? If you haven’t had problems with them you probably haven’t thought much about them lately.

When I worked my way through college at a bakery.  I remember my boss would go down in the basement once a week to take inventory.  Taking Inventory is making a list of what you have so you can determine what you need.  Sometimes my prayer life is kind of like that.  Mostly I focus on what I need and sometimes I’m grateful for what I have.  But the times I have experienced what I consider real prayer have come unexpectedly when in to course of my taking inventory I have moved something that causes some insight, some glimpse of the Divine, some forgotten memento buried deep in my soul to slip out triggering a flood of emotions leaving me sitting cross-legged on the floor for two hours in stunned silence, awe and wonder.

Anne Lamott speaks about how there are really only three types of prayers that we say. Every prayer we say can fit into these categories–Help, Thanks, Wow.  That’s it. Help, Thanks and Wow.

And we usually say them in that order too. I know help is always where I go first.  My brain seems to be hardwired to always focus on lack, preoccupied with what I need.  Sometimes I get around to being grateful for what I have and giving thanks, often times simply because I think I should – kind of like knowing you should read the card from Grandma first before you just take the money out. But on very rare occasion, I’ve been surprised by the grace of being able to simply stand in awe and wonder and amazement at this crazy thing called life and the mysterious energy that makes it all go, seemingly moving all that is toward the fullness of potential that we can’t even imagine.  Those are the “wow” moments. Those are the moments of sitting teary-eyed cross-legged on the floor for two hours.

 I wonder how much richer my own prayer life would be if I could somehow rewire my psyche and reverse the order of my prayer, If I could begin with Wow more often than I do. I know you can’t force a wow experience any more you can force a deer to come out of the woods by shouting its name or force someone to fall in love with you, but is there a way to quiet myself so that this experience will be more likely to make and appearance? It seems as though that is the natural order of the way real prayer should be. At those times when I start with Wow, the gratitude seems to flow from my lips as a simple natural progression, not a contrived response rooted in guilt, but an involuntary echo of the majesty of which I just caught a fleeting glimpse.  And then when I have gotten around to asking for help, my prayer for help is grounded in a faith and confidence that can only come from first having the experience of awe and wonder.

Today’s scripture is a good example of beginning with Wow.  The psalmist reminds himself, reminds his own soul, to start his prayer by taking an inventory and standing in awe and wonder of all the things God is for him and God has done for him. He starts, “Praise the Lord, O my Soul, and forget not all his benefits…” And he continues to with his inventory:

• Forgives sins and heals diseases
• Brings justice to the oppressed
• Does not hide his ways but makes them known to his people
• Does not harbor anger forever
• Does not treat us as our iniquities deserve
• Understands us because he made us
• Cares for us even though our days are temporary like the grass and flowers of the field
• Though our days be temporary, his love is everlasting
• Loves us like a parent compassionate towards their children
• As high is the heavens above the earth is his love for us
• And our own transgressions he has put as far from us as the East is from the West.

This was how the psalmist experienced the Wow of God thousands of years ago with the language and tools he had as this disposal to express it.  What is it about God or the mystery of life that makes you say Wow today? How do you name it?

My invitation to us this day is that we follow the example of the psalmist and experiment with beginning our prayers with Wow.  Quieting our own soul enough that the Wow of God makes and appearance, and that we have the grace to notice it.  The rest of the prayer happens by itself. 

Mark 2 21-22

“No One sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. Otherwise, the new piece will pull away from the old, making the tear worse. ²² And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins.”

In his book, Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself, Joe Dispenza reflects on why personal change is so hard.  One of the reasons is that we unknowingly try to graft the new person that we want to be onto the trunk of the person we already are, and this approach often meets with limited success.  Sort of like if you try to install new programming in a computer over top of programming that is already there. If it works at all, the result will be very slow, clunky and full of glitches because of all the mixed messages.  We say we want to be somebody different than who we are, but this new programming is up against all of the previous subconscious programming that we have used to operate our lives up to this point.  Like a fish unaware of the water in which it swims because it knows nothing different, so it is with us.  We aren’t even aware of our own operating system because it is so much a part of who we are.

Dispenza says,  “Psychologists tell us that by the time we’re in our mid-30s, our identity or personality will be completely formed. This means that for those of us over 35, we have memorized a select set of behaviors, attitudes, beliefs, emotional reactions, habits, skills, associative memories, conditioned responses, and perceptions that are now subconsciously programmed within us. Those programs are running us, because the body has become the mind. This means that we will think the same thoughts, feel the same feelings, react in identical ways, behave in the same manner, believe the same dogmas, and perceive reality the same ways. About 95 percent of who we are by midlife is a series of subconscious programs that have become automatic—driving a car, brushing our teeth, overeating when we’re stressed, worrying about our future, judging our friends, complaining about our lives, blaming our parents, not believing in ourselves, and insisting on being chronically unhappy, just to name a few.”
― Joe Dispenza, Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself: How to Lose Your Mind and Create a New One

If we want to become somebody new, first we have to do the hard tedious work of uninstalling the old self, the old programming.  Before planting new seeds, we have to till the ground and remove the weeds.  Before we ask what we want for ourselves, we need to become clear about what we don’t want any more first. 

I find it eerily coincidental that as I was pondering over this book I read my horoscope for this week which reads:

“Who don’t you want to be, Pisces? Where don’t you want to go? What experiences are not necessary in your drive to become the person you were born to be? I encourage you to ask yourself questions like those in the coming weeks. You’re entering a phase when you can create long-term good fortune for yourself by knowing what you don’t like and don’t need and don’t require. Explore the positive effects of refusal. Wield the power of saying NO so as to liberate yourself from all that’s irrelevant, uninteresting, trivial, and unhealthy.” Rob Brezsny, Free Will Astrology.

Dispenza says the key to uninstalling the old programming is meditation, and not the kind that involves thinking, but the kind that involves simple awareness without judgement or categories or rationalizations, etc. We need to tap into the “non-conceptual” intelligence that is beneath the thinking mind because the thinking mind is a pre-programmed mind, and thus, part of the problem. As Einstein said, “Our problems will not be solved by the same minds that created them”.

In the Christian tradition, in order to become a new person, you have to “repent” of the old.  In Greek, the word for “repent” is “metanoia” which literally it means, “To think outside your mind”.

How true it is.    

Be yourself; Everyone else is already taken.

— Oscar Wilde.

This is the first post on my new blog. I’m just getting this new blog going, so stay tuned for more. Subscribe below to get notified when I post new updates.

Hello.  My name is Ryan O’Rourke and as of this writing I am a board certified Catholic Lay chaplain who has spent the majority of my ministerial career in eldercare.

From a very early age I was interested in all things spiritual.  By the time I was a teenager and suffering from the thousand natural shocks that teenage flesh is heir to, I had become hyper-interested in religion less for answers than for relief from the pain of life.  I began with my own Catholic faith as it was closest at hand, but in short order ventured into the study of other faiths and philosophies.  Never did find many answers, but the pain relief came from people who helped me wrestle with the questions.

I consider myself a person of faith not because of people who presumed to know the answers, but because of those who didn’t let me wrestle alone.

That is still where the relief comes from.  Its been quite a journey since my teenage years.  Along the way I’ve experienced, as I’m sure you have, success and failure both personally and professionally.  I’ve met people who have radically changed the trajectory of my life in ways I could have never foresaw or imagined, some of whom are still in my life today and some who were only meant for a season.  I’ve experienced love, light, laughter, community, isolation, depression, darkness, difficulties, peak experiences and the valleys that go with them.  I’ve acquired friends and enemies. I’ve loved and lost. I’ve been hurt and I have done the hurting. 

And I’ve learned that God can be found in it all. 

In a very round-about way I did circle back to the Catholic faith of my childhood, albeit with different eyes.  When people ask me my religion these days, I like to say that I’m rooted in Catholicism, but not limited to it. If religion is the language through which we speak to God and God to us, I’m Catholic not because I belief it is a superior religious system, but because it is my native tongue and the language I will always speak the best.

I’ve done a lot of writing over the course of my personal and professional life trying to frame the ordinary day-to-day in the context of the big picture and trying to find meaning in the midst of the madness.  Sometimes I write because it is part of my job to prepare sermons and eulogies.  Other times I write because I have a flash of insight that seems at the time important enough to capture. Sometimes its simply because I have and itch to scratch or an ax to grind. 

This blog will probably include a little of it all.  I hope you will find inspiration, humor and comfort in my attempt to frame common experiences and look for God in the midst of them. Thank you for reading.