This morning one of the brothers was preaching on innocence. He reminded us of the roots the word has in a sense of of harmlessness. "Innocence" is compounded from the Latin verb noceo, to harm, as in the medical motto, primum non nocere, "first do no harm."
We can fail to understand innocence because of the backwardness of the world's logic; it makes us look at innocence as a lack, a lack that is then completed by experience or wisdom.
Real innocence is, in fact, the power not to harm ourselves, others, and the earth by our sins. The corruption of sin traps us in patterns of thinking and acting by which we come to hurt ourselves and those around us. To become innocent is to recover the power not to hurt anyone.
July 14, 2006
July 12, 2006
College Radio
It seems to me that one of the greatest things that can happen to someone is to be forced to take the "critical turn." We begin to question what we have been taught, we wonder if the baseline wisdom we have received about being a human being in the world is actually right, we wonder if there isn't something better.
For Abraham it was the call to leave his native place. For Paul it was the Risen Lord speaking on the way to Damascus. For Augustine it was the frustration of not being able to figure himself out with his own mental power. For Francis it seems to have been the war of the Assisiani with Perugia and his encounters with lepers.
Now I wouldn't dare compare myself to these great converts, but for me it was college radio.
I think I was about 10 when I started listening to popular music. And I listened to what seemed to be the music that all of my peers were listening to, the "top 40" songs that were playing on the radio.
When I was 14 or so, a friend recommended to me that I turn my radio dial to the left and tune in some college radio. So I tuned in WNHU from the University of New Haven, and it changed my life. In some very real ways it set me on the path I'm trying to follow today. Every saturday they played underground heavy metal and on weekday afternoons a combination of hardcore punk and what would later be called "alternative" rock.
I recognized the superiority of the music immediately. It was more energetic and visceral. It was more interesting because it often spoke of real issues and emerged from social consciousness or radical politics. And it started to change my basic orientation toward the world. If the music that everybody else liked so much wasn't actually any good, maybe their ideas about the world or their wisdom about going through life was open to question too.
I started to question authority. Eventually I started to question even the fundamental understandings of the world that were around me. One thing led to another, and to make a long story short, I eventually came to Christianity in my desire for a seamless way to grasp and understand human being in the world.
Fortunately, I've been living in a good college town these past few years, with good college radio.
For Abraham it was the call to leave his native place. For Paul it was the Risen Lord speaking on the way to Damascus. For Augustine it was the frustration of not being able to figure himself out with his own mental power. For Francis it seems to have been the war of the Assisiani with Perugia and his encounters with lepers.
Now I wouldn't dare compare myself to these great converts, but for me it was college radio.
I think I was about 10 when I started listening to popular music. And I listened to what seemed to be the music that all of my peers were listening to, the "top 40" songs that were playing on the radio.
When I was 14 or so, a friend recommended to me that I turn my radio dial to the left and tune in some college radio. So I tuned in WNHU from the University of New Haven, and it changed my life. In some very real ways it set me on the path I'm trying to follow today. Every saturday they played underground heavy metal and on weekday afternoons a combination of hardcore punk and what would later be called "alternative" rock.
I recognized the superiority of the music immediately. It was more energetic and visceral. It was more interesting because it often spoke of real issues and emerged from social consciousness or radical politics. And it started to change my basic orientation toward the world. If the music that everybody else liked so much wasn't actually any good, maybe their ideas about the world or their wisdom about going through life was open to question too.
I started to question authority. Eventually I started to question even the fundamental understandings of the world that were around me. One thing led to another, and to make a long story short, I eventually came to Christianity in my desire for a seamless way to grasp and understand human being in the world.
Fortunately, I've been living in a good college town these past few years, with good college radio.
July 11, 2006
Benedict of Nursia
Today we celebrate the feast of St. Benedict, the patriarch of western religious life. I couldn't resist posting my favorite part of Benedict's Rule:
On the proper amount of drink:
We read that monks should not drink wine at all, but because in our time the monks cannot be persuaded of this, let us at least agree to drink sparingly. (40:6)
Sometimes we have to be wary even of our ideals. The devil is perfectly happy to have us to be devout and idealistic, provided it can be done without God. When we lust after the self-satisfaction of being the idealists we want to be according to our own will, it is easy to forget the more subtle and hidden splendor of the living God.
On the proper amount of drink:
We read that monks should not drink wine at all, but because in our time the monks cannot be persuaded of this, let us at least agree to drink sparingly. (40:6)
Sometimes we have to be wary even of our ideals. The devil is perfectly happy to have us to be devout and idealistic, provided it can be done without God. When we lust after the self-satisfaction of being the idealists we want to be according to our own will, it is easy to forget the more subtle and hidden splendor of the living God.
July 10, 2006
Veronica Giuliani
Today we remember St. Veronica Giuliani, an Italian Capuchin Poor Clare of the late 17th and early 18th centuries. She acquired some fame even in her own lifetime for her intense and sometimes outlandish mystical experiences, as well as some stigmata.
Part of the selection from her diary that is in the Office of Readings grabbed me this morning:
For several days now I am experiencing a certain disposition in my heart which I do not understand, so I will merely describe the effects it produces in me.
It reminded me of the advice of a wise spiritual director. He told me not to expect or be greedy for any experiences of God during prayer or meditation. Instead, I should try to notice the effects of the meditation in the rest of my life.
"What do you usually do right after your meditation?" he asked me.
I told him that I usually have coffee or wash the dishes from the morning.
"And do you have coffee or wash dishes differently, with more recollection and peace, because you have meditated?" he asked.
He taught me to try to discern the presence of God in this sort of way.
Part of the selection from her diary that is in the Office of Readings grabbed me this morning:
For several days now I am experiencing a certain disposition in my heart which I do not understand, so I will merely describe the effects it produces in me.
It reminded me of the advice of a wise spiritual director. He told me not to expect or be greedy for any experiences of God during prayer or meditation. Instead, I should try to notice the effects of the meditation in the rest of my life.
"What do you usually do right after your meditation?" he asked me.
I told him that I usually have coffee or wash the dishes from the morning.
"And do you have coffee or wash dishes differently, with more recollection and peace, because you have meditated?" he asked.
He taught me to try to discern the presence of God in this sort of way.
July 8, 2006
Origins
Thanks again to Steph for provoking me to a post that's challenging to write.
So, where did St. Francis get all his ideas? From what insights did the Franciscan movement emerge? A lot of ink has been spilled on this issue, but you might start at Cajetan Esser's Origins of the Franciscan Order, if you can find it.
For a quick and dirty answer, I suggest 4 categories: apostolic life, class, violence, and money.
1. The apostolic life. The 12th century was a time of great energy around religious life and the experimentation with new forms. In contrast to the stable life of the monastery built around the communal, primitive church imagination of Acts 2:42-47, people began to long for the life of the apostles themselves. This meant itinerant preaching, homelessness, and the economic insecurity that goes with them. This insight produced a lot of religious movements, including the Franciscans. The followers of Peter Waldo are a good example of an expression that came before Francis.
2. Class. A shift in social class structures was going on at the time of Francis, especially in Italy. The re-invention of the money economy was producing a merchant class, shifting power away from the church and the ruling classes to the towns. Francis himself was part of this nouveau riche merchant class. As a child, Francis presumably witnessed the sacking of the imperial fortress of Assisi by this new class of urban elites.
Even more, the young Francis dreamed of his own upward mobility. He would become a knight. This imagination never really leaves Francis, though it shifts into his chivalrous affiar with Lady Poverty.
From his experience of these chaotic changes, it is easy to see how Francis could have imagined his brothers as fratres menores, identifying them with one of the older social categories, those who were "lesser" in society. Francis saw the emergence of new forms of power and appropriation. With these came new forms of economic and class injustice. Thus he wanted his brothers to be "lesser" brothers who lived sine proprio, without property.
3. Violence. Francis was born into a very violent world. I've already mentioned the destruction of the imperial fortress by the people of Assisi in 1198. Francis himself was taken prisoner in one of Assisi's savage wars with neighboring Perugia. His biographers tell us that his conversion began to take place during his convalescence after spending a year in the Perugian dungeons.
It was perhaps from his own experience of violence that Francis began to identify with the ultimate victim of violence, Christ crucified. In any case, he soon rejects all the power and property that leads people to need weapons and protection.
4. Money. The new economy was changing everything in Francis' time. It changed relationships, upset the old order of things, and created new forms of poverty and wealth. Francis became almost pathologically opposed to money, and was always forbidding his brothers to receive it or even to touch it (with the exception of caring for sick brothers in the Earlier Rule.) For Francis, money was a concentrated form of impersonal power, and thus a threat to the dependence on God and others that was the life of the lesser brother.
O.k., that's a lot. But notice! All of these motivations are even more true today! That's why the Franciscan movement continues to have something to say to the world.
So, where did St. Francis get all his ideas? From what insights did the Franciscan movement emerge? A lot of ink has been spilled on this issue, but you might start at Cajetan Esser's Origins of the Franciscan Order, if you can find it.
For a quick and dirty answer, I suggest 4 categories: apostolic life, class, violence, and money.
1. The apostolic life. The 12th century was a time of great energy around religious life and the experimentation with new forms. In contrast to the stable life of the monastery built around the communal, primitive church imagination of Acts 2:42-47, people began to long for the life of the apostles themselves. This meant itinerant preaching, homelessness, and the economic insecurity that goes with them. This insight produced a lot of religious movements, including the Franciscans. The followers of Peter Waldo are a good example of an expression that came before Francis.
2. Class. A shift in social class structures was going on at the time of Francis, especially in Italy. The re-invention of the money economy was producing a merchant class, shifting power away from the church and the ruling classes to the towns. Francis himself was part of this nouveau riche merchant class. As a child, Francis presumably witnessed the sacking of the imperial fortress of Assisi by this new class of urban elites.
Even more, the young Francis dreamed of his own upward mobility. He would become a knight. This imagination never really leaves Francis, though it shifts into his chivalrous affiar with Lady Poverty.
From his experience of these chaotic changes, it is easy to see how Francis could have imagined his brothers as fratres menores, identifying them with one of the older social categories, those who were "lesser" in society. Francis saw the emergence of new forms of power and appropriation. With these came new forms of economic and class injustice. Thus he wanted his brothers to be "lesser" brothers who lived sine proprio, without property.
3. Violence. Francis was born into a very violent world. I've already mentioned the destruction of the imperial fortress by the people of Assisi in 1198. Francis himself was taken prisoner in one of Assisi's savage wars with neighboring Perugia. His biographers tell us that his conversion began to take place during his convalescence after spending a year in the Perugian dungeons.
It was perhaps from his own experience of violence that Francis began to identify with the ultimate victim of violence, Christ crucified. In any case, he soon rejects all the power and property that leads people to need weapons and protection.
4. Money. The new economy was changing everything in Francis' time. It changed relationships, upset the old order of things, and created new forms of poverty and wealth. Francis became almost pathologically opposed to money, and was always forbidding his brothers to receive it or even to touch it (with the exception of caring for sick brothers in the Earlier Rule.) For Francis, money was a concentrated form of impersonal power, and thus a threat to the dependence on God and others that was the life of the lesser brother.
O.k., that's a lot. But notice! All of these motivations are even more true today! That's why the Franciscan movement continues to have something to say to the world.
Motivation
Our friend by the bay has gotten to the heart of a profound spiritual lesson in a simple way.
Franciscan Blogosphere
It has really been a joy to get in touch with so many other Franciscan blogs over these months. This is just a note to say that, often for good reason, some have become dormant for the summer. I'm going to stop checking them every day, so let me know when you get going again. Thanks!
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