Friends In The Lord

Citations for Life

In light of the recent article “40 Cases of Plagiarism,” sources have been the talk of the day lately.  In a paper, of course, we cite somebody else for much of the foundational material for our work.  However, in the task of living we also have our sources, but how often do we cite these?  Who first brought to our attention that little idea or comment, mentioned years ago, that has stuck with us and shaped the way that we go about our day?  In what ways have we “cited” them, showing our acknowledgment of their impact on who we have become thanks to their love and care?  As Robert Folio’s post on Monday aptly shows, there might be more fitting ways than a simple footnote.

Still John Wickham – John Wickham Still

John Wickham, S.J.

He took me on a most intriguing survey of the whole history of English Literature.  He taught me to read in context, to relish the turn of phrase and to travel with imagery.  He took me to my first experience of Shakespeare, William Hutt in Richard II at Stratford.  He taught me rhetoric.  And most importantly he taught me a phrase I keep trying to learn, “Murder your darlings!” – when writing or speaking, be free enough to delete what you love most for the good of the whole piece.  John Wickham was the best teacher I ever had, and I had excellent teachers all through my schooling.

Though John died on July 7, 2010, surrounded by fellow Jesuits and many nephews and nieces, I know that John Wickham is still here.  Nobody can take him away.  He has marked me.  In the “Communion of Saints” he still takes interest in how I am understanding what I read.  He is still interested in my writing style (and praying that it will continue to improve).  But now he is interested more in my “living style”.  Having completed his journey with and to God, he is still here teaching me not just turns of phrase, but what turns to choose in life.  John is still here.  He will always be here.

John suffered from Alzheimer disease during the last 5 years of his life.  At the end of his life, he could not walk, could not talk, and could not feed himself.  He always smiled beautifully, but towards the end, I wondered, “Is this smile a response, or is it an un-chosen facial reaction?”  To see John so feeble, so unlike his witty, insightful and creative self was so very disappointing.  But what Lisa Genova tells us in Still Alice is that he is still John Wickham.  Yes, the mind and the body have been severely damaged, but his spirit was still there.  John could still love and receive love.  John was still there behind that smile.

The image of John, my very best teacher in College, continues to show me that all who are diminished and maybe severely ravaged by illness, ageing, accident or mistakes they have made, are still…  The invitation and the challenge to all of us is to look beyond, to look deep down, to look past the glazed eyes and to see the goodness still there.  The call is to continue loving and receiving love from those who seem so changed, so far away, so far gone.  Though no longer the same, John Wickham is still the same person, my very best teacher.  Once again, I am reminded, that “only three things last – faith, hope and love.  And the greatest of these is love.”

Remembering and Gratitude

Each of us spends some time in our day remembering and thinking back over past events. Sometimes we go back to our own personal experiences; other times it is to past events long before our time which still have meaning for us. This summer, I have been reading a history of Rome from one thousand BC to the year one, for example. Historical research is one great act of remembering.

One of our main religious activities, too, is remembering. Johann Baptist Metz called the Jesus Event our most dangerous memory. This is a memory we consciously evoke at each Eucharist. Our act and expression of gratitude is connected to our remembering. Certain memories should not go away, should not be repressed, but should be always kept alive, as disturbing as they are. It is not living in the past; it is being in the present with and the gracious embrace of our past.

Exeter Cathedral in Devon in South West England

I share with you these images from last Easter. This beautiful church is Exeter Cathedral in Devon in South West England. Photos, too, are little capsules of time-past and help feed our memory. This church embodies some of the history of Christianity in England: the great architectural expressions of faith from the middle ages, the reform and the break with Roman Catholicism, the decline and then rebirth of Patristic Christianity. This church is a glorious space to the glory of God.

General John Graves Simcoe

To the right of the choir in the ambulatory isle I came upon this memorial to General John Graves Simcoe. His wall plaque is sided with a British soldier from the eighteenth century and a native North American, possibly modeled on the people who possessed Ontario before the British and the French came here. A bust of Simcoe’s likeness is carved in marble. He was the founder of Toronto, which he named York in 1793, among the many other things that he did in the early days of Ontario. He has not been forgotten in Exeter Cathedral, by his family or the Heritage Department of the Province of Ontario.  He has not been entirely forgotten in Ontario; we have a lake and a few other things named after him. We have forgotten most of what he lived for, the struggles he had, the hardships and triumphs of the time.

All this quiet reflection seems some distance away from the commotion of the G20 meetings. But each plays its part in our weaving together the strands from history which inform our present realities. Our gratitude to God for our very being is rooted in particular times and places.

Defining One Another

This past weekend I attended a wedding.  The ceremony was beautiful and evoked memories of my own wedding of hardly a year ago.  In particular, it reminded me that we have all taken vows, in one capacity or another (civil, spiritual, or otherwise), and serve others in this capacity.  This role comes to constitute who we are, while at the same time we shape and define what exactly this role will be.  The majority of those present at the wedding I attended were members of our church.  In this case obscurity was dissolved and it became plain as day just how we were all connected and how we shaped the identity of one another.  In the season of weddings, ordinations, and an impending new semester, it can be helpful to see who we have committed ourselves to, both voluntarily and involuntarily.

Finding Water For The Summer Drought

For my wife and I, this past week has been exhausting.  Family has come in from out of town and we have faithfully been playing the part of host.  This has meant non-stop touring of the city, more food than a person can handle, and zero time to stop and think.  In many ways, it feels a lot like Lent (replace touring with church services).  However, as busy as things got then, we never felt worn out.  There was always that dimension to our activity that gave energy.  During this lull in the liturgical and school year, perhaps it is a good time to ask where we are each drawing our strength and joy from at the moment.

Finding God In All Things

From left, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Japan's Prime Minister Naoto Kan, European Union Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, and President Barack Obama gather for the G8 leaders and outreach nations group photo at the G8 Summit. Photo: AP

In the Spiritual Exercises St. Ignatius encourages us “to find God in all things”.  As I write this during the weekend of the G8/G20, I am finding it hard to find God in all things – reports tell us that the G8 has limited their contributions to the fund for international maternal health while at the same time one billion dollars is being spent to keep these eight and twenty safe from demonstrators and terrorists.

In the face of such events my temptation is to want to find God in authoritarian parental action.  If only God would step in and straighten out the nations’ priorities.   This would be a God who answers prayers miraculously, obviously taking care of the needs of this world, and in the process, my needs as well.   God would act like the good parent who comes to the rescue of an infant suffering some deprivation – food, warmth, or comfort.

God, however, mercifully treats us according to our age and maturity.   Of course, God’s love sustains and protects us, but most of us are no longer children, and God respects this.  We are young, middle or old adults;   young, middle or old seniors.  Our relationship with God is one of mature intimacy and relationship.   As Sally McFague, a contemporary theologian, reminds us, God can be parent, lover and friend.  In adulthood our relationship with God has matured into one of friendship and partnership.

We can find God in all things.   In the G8/20 it is in the complexities of the economics, geopolitics, science, sociology and psychology of world leadership and government.  Leaders and nations attentive to the Gospel can discern wise and just action in our world.  In our own life we can find God in our prayerful reflection upon both the everyday and the extraordinary challenges we encounter and struggle with.  God is there inspiring, enlightening and strengthening us.   God is there offering us friendship, partnership and love.

The Invisible Community

One more place where our prayers are gathered - Regis College chapel prayer chest. (Photo: Beau Holland)

Despite all of the events right outside the college’s door, there has not been much traffic within the college these last few weeks.  Things have finally wound down, and it would seem that many people are off and away for the summer holidays.  Throughout the year we gather together in the physical building of the college, but during the summer we no less gather together in prayer.  Wherever we find ourselves, perhaps now is a good time to reflect back on this past year and remember those whom we have had the joy to meet and get to know.  During the year, it is easy to see how we are one body in Christ, whereas being far apart helps us to live the mystery that this entails.

Freedom North And South Of The Border

I am sitting watching the rain lashing my window on the 8^th floor of a university building in the Mid West of the USA. The sky is dark and occasionally brightens, the rain is heavy now but there are occasional lulls and I might almost imagine then it is like the soft rain of home. But I am many miles away from Scotland and sitting here on the 4^th of July I am pondering the nature of the freedom we celebrate this day and that Canada celebrated on the 1^st of July. A freedom that I do recall was proclaimed in Scotland in 1320.

We have the historical details. July 4^th commemorates the adoption of the Declaration of Independence July 4^th 1776. The document was primarily written by Thomas Jefferson and served as a formal announcement that the 13 American colonies were no longer part of the British Empire and would henceforth be free and independent states. July 1^st in Canada commemorates July 1^st 1867 and the enactment of the British North America Act which united 2 British colonies and a province of the British Empire into a single country called Canada.

Yet centuries before, close to a small fishing village on the east coast of Scotland, a major claim for freedom was made by the people of Scotland against their long time enemy England. The Declaration of Arbroath was, and many Scots would still argue has been, unequalled in its eloquent plea for the liberty of man. From the darkness of medieval minds it shone a torch upon future struggles which its signatories could not have foreseen or understood. The author of this noble Latin address is unknown, though it is assumed to have been composed by Bernard de Linton, Abbot of Arbroath and Chancellor of Scotland. Above the seals of eight earls and forty-five barons, it asked for the Pope’s dispassionate intervention in the bloody quarrel between the Scots and the English. The importance of the document is two-fold. First, it sets the will and the wishes of the people above that of the king. Second, it affirmed the nation’s independence in a way no battle could and justified it with a truth that is beyond nation and race. Man has a right to freedom and a duty to defend it with his life.

Perhaps the most poignant sentences are the following:

For as long as but a hundred of us remain alive, never will we on any conditions be brought under English rule. It is not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom — for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with his life.

And what of ourselves in 2010 as we enjoy the civic holidays available? It is our understanding as Christians that: for freedom Christ has set us free, as St Paul declares, and surely this is the most profound understanding of our freedom. It rests not on national identity, good though that may be, and certainly not on the disparagement of others. It has nothing to do with wealth or social status. At its heart it is a three-fold reality a freedom from all that can make us fearful, possessive and dependent upon anything other than God. It is a freedom for all the many good actions and services that may be undertaken in the world and it is a freedom to refer all things, absolutely everything, to the God who made us, sustains us and who will ultimately welcome us at the last.

And as I write these last lines the sky has brightened, the rain has stopped and the sun looks set to warm the celebrations!

Finding Room in the Crowd

G20 protests in Toronto (Photo: Dennis Marciniak)

The Gospel reading at my church last Sunday was the story of the demoniac and the pigs.  In light of current events, I began to think about crowds and to associate those in the story (demons and a town mob) with the crowds that gathered in our city.  Yet, I realized that I was in the midst of a crowd in the church, and that the similarities might be greater than the differences.  Immediately I was reminded of Father Sertillanges’ words, “In the crowd one loses one’s identity, unless one keeps firm hold of oneself, and this hold must first be created.”  Wherever we found ourselves this past week, whether among the protests or chattering on about them, it is worth examining where our true self might have been.

Lonergan And The G20: Hope In The Midst Of Despair

The coincidence of two events last week prompts me to write this entry. The Lonergan Workshop, held every year at Boston College, gathered scholars from around the world to explore the legacy of the Canadian philosopher-theologian who taught in Rome, Boston and at Regis College. Over the last weekend, the leaders of the G20 (G34??) nations gathered in Toronto to discuss economic and political questions of global import, and to try to develop at least some mechanisms of global cooperation.

The G20 meeting, as everyone knows from the news, was marked by violence from protest groups. As many have pointed out, this violence is a response to the more and less overt violence that marks the lives of the poor, oppressed by economic and political structures that do not take sufficient account of their dignity or their genuine needs. And, of course, there is the much discussed cost of security for both the G8 and the G20.

I do not want to take sides here on whether or what kind of protest is warranted, or whether or not the G20 show of force was legitimate; nor do I intend to be critical of police. And in a short blog entry like this, it is not possible to offer in depth analysis. I do want to ask the simple question: why are we, as members of Canadian society, turning more and more to force and violence as a way of solving our problems?

The signs of this decline are all around us, from increased reliance on courts to solve social and cultural conflicts punitively, to the descent of parliamentary debate into name-calling and media manipulation, to public confrontations between advocacy groups that used to be allies. It seems that we no longer trust that public and transparent conversation and negotiation will lead to new solutions for our society. And it is true that more and more, our leaders turn away from reason and rely solely on personal willpower and image to remain in office. All around, this is a sign of despair in our ability to achieve the common good.

Bernard Lonergan

Bernard Lonergan believed firmly that Christians gathered together by and in Christ were intended by God to be a social and cultural leaven helping men and women confront the reality of evil and injustice in the world. His entire career was at the service of what he called the “just and mysterious law of the cross,” whereby God in God’s wisdom meets the problem of evil with supernatural love, making of that evil an occasion for a higher and transformative good. And last week, I witnessed the truth of his commitment over and over again. Perhaps the best example is that of the nurse who reported on the Middle Eastern group known as Combatants for Peace, which brings together former combatants on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in acts of reconciliation and justice-building. Approaching injustice and violence with love releases our ability to search for truth and unleashes a genuine social and cultural creativity that does not need to rely on violence to discover new ways of living together.

Combatants for Peace, and the Lonergan movement in general, are signs to me that there is reason to hope in the midst of despair.