The Chicken and the Pig

Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself,take up his cross, and follow me...What profit would there be for one to gain the whole world and forfeit his life?"

I Can Fly

by R. Kelly

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I used to think that I could not go on
And life was nothing but an awful song
But now I know the meaning of true love
I'm leaning on the everlasting arms

If I can see it, then I can do it
If I just believe it, there's nothing to it

I believe I can fly
I believe I can touch the sky
I think about it every night and day

Spread my wings and fly away
I believe I can soar
I see me running through that open door
I believe I can fly
I believe I can fly
I believe I can fly

See I was on the verge of breaking down
Sometimes silence can seem so loud
There are miracles in life I must achieve
But first I know it starts inside of me, oh

If I can see it, then I can be it
If I just believe it, there's nothing to it...

The chicken and the pig may be a way to illustrate this teaching, a paradox like so many of the Christ's teachings. This little saying of the chicken and the pig goes like this: In the course of preparing a typical bacon, egg and toast breakfast there is some distinction to be made. For while the chicken gives an egg to the breakfast, the pig makes the total sacrifice. And the Christ challenges us likewise with his passion and death on the Cross. He exhorts one to make a commitment, to pick up ones' cross and follow as disciples.
Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself,take up his cross, and follow me.  For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.What profit would there be for one to gain the whole world and forfeit his life? Or what can one give in exchange for his life? For the Son of Man will come with his angels in his Father’s glory, and then he will repay everyone according to his conduct.  Amen, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.”   St. Matthew 24-28
This is the prime condition of a disciple. And a chief mystery of faith is that we may first believe and then see. Belief has not a lot to do with facts or intellect. It is the gift of simple knowing. One just knows or senses deeply within the rightness of a feeling, a person or a relationship with others.

Mankind Waits For You

Kadosh Kadosh Kadosh Adonai Tz'vaot / Melo Kol Haaretz Kevodo.--Hebrew Kaddush

Humming bird
performed by Seals & Croft
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Mankind was waiting for you to come along...
Lend us your wings
let us soar in the atmosphere Lift us to the Heaven of holiness

Oh, source of our being, hummingbird...

Have you noticed the days are getting longer
somehow keep getting longer?
The spirit son is stronger
And a new day is dawning for us all...

The ancient prayer the Kaddush comes to the Christian believer from ancient roots of the father, Judaism. It remains essentially unchanged for thousands and thousands of years. The words are from the Bible, Isaiah 6:3. In current use this same prayer also called by its Latin name the Sanctus, is a cornerstone of devotional prayer. It becomes one into trance, into mystery into prayer. 

Its theme is the simple chant of Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Hosts... The Bible refers to it a number of times; in Corinthians, in the Apocalypse of John, in Matthew 21, in Isaiah. A prayer of hope of open hearts, the Sanctus calls to the holy one to descend upon the faithful with Spirit and grace.

The theme of a bird in the lyrics above bring this prayer to mind. While the dove is the more usual bird, why not another, like the Humming bird? It 's a beautiful and inspiring creature widely present in the temperate regions of north America and elsewhere.

The Face of a Religious China

"Grace means that a life is not assessed for its faults but by a love of God that overwhelms all those faults"  -- Rev. Verity A. Jones

Today, around the world many more are coming to the teaching of the Christ. Forming a community, a Church that stands for all people in solidarity with suffering humanity, and engages peoples of all cultures and religions, is the Church teaching of the Gospels (bible stories). She stands with principle. All peoples the world over, want something to believe in, regardless of their faith heritage, be its origins East or West.

Jesuit Father Myles Sheehan, member of the same Jesuit Christian community as Pope Francis, recounts the Jesuit community experiences since their recent arrival in China. He writes in US Catholic magazine that there were 200 persons attending at a recent prayer meeting; this scene is being repeated every day throughout the country. On Sundays throughout China it occurs in multiplicity. There are now thousands of churches in China, representing all Christian denominations alongside the native faiths of that land.

What is becoming clear is that the number of Christians in China is growing. With the incorporation of Hong Kong into China since 1997, including its free prevalence of all faiths, non-native faiths are now taking hold within the mainland. In fact says Sheehan, there are now more regular church attenders in China today than in all of Europe. China saw more than 20,000 Catholic Christian baptisms in 2011 according to the Church in China.The call to love your neighbor is taking hold.

There are also what Sheehan calls "cultural Christians," many young and educated persons who believe but do not belong. They are a growing group, in many ways coming to the forefront of bringing the Good News to all parts of China. They play a significant role in the future of their nation, carrying with them the ideas, values and philosophies of the Christ.

Their growing Church is a place which holds for her guiding principles, an all inclusive, all-encompassing view, without walls or buildings nor ideologies that omit the value of the dignity of a person. In this modern, industrializing world the Church forms a harbor, a counter-force for harmony, and a home.

This Church of China must stand for all; its aims must be lived, not merely proclaimed through work for charitable causes and advocacy for social justice. In other parts of Asia, this mission takes its fulfillment in solidarity with the Minjung of South Korea, the Dalit of India and the Burakumin of Japan, for example.

While the marginalized in Asia are not all Christians, the indigenous faiths of the region share same or similar deep concerns for Asia. As for the Church in Asia, she stands alongside others with a message of not just a church in Asia but the Church in Asia, uniquely representing her community. After all, building community is at the heart of relationships.

Small Packages, Big Things

We May Never Pass This Way Again

by Seals and Croft

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 Life, so they say
Is but a game and they'd let it slip away
Love, like the autumn sun
Should be dyin' but it's only just begun

Like the twilight in the road up ahead
They don't see just where we're goin'
All the secrets in the universe whisper in our ears
All the years come and go, take us up, always up

We may never pass this way again
We may never pass this way again
We may never pass this way again

Dreams, so they say
Are for the fools and they let 'em drift away
Peace, like the silent dove
Should be flyin' but it's only just begun...

So I wanna laugh while the laughin' is easy
I wanna cry it makes it worthwhile
I may never pass this way again
That's why I want it with you

'Cause you make me feel like I'm more than a friend
Like I'm the journey and you're the journey's end
I may never pass this way again
That's why I want it with you...

Recently there was a talk given to the public at large which included a good number of young, art students. The speaker, an artist himself was exuberant, joyful and rather a bit nervous. And he had a lot to say, a lot. Time was short; his remarks crunched into a 45 minute segment. The students in the audience had other places to go and things to do. For his part the artist-speaker, a middle aged man had much to tell, some thought too much.
And then there were the traditional nude drawings that he and so many before him have studied and replicated. The human figure, it seems, is an unending source of wonder and beauty.

While he showed  many examples of his "body" of work, it was clear that he is quite competent renderer, and he clearly enjoyed cartoon figures; his profession as a graphic artist somewhat limited his progress in these areas. This man's personal story was bold, irreverent, witty, amusing, and at times, startling, if not simply shocking. And he became a bit defensive. His youthful student audience was some, a bit offended.

Should he have defended what is his work, the beauty of nature? Or was it simply marred by his interpretations, his perception of that nature? Maybe he would be better to allow the work to speak for itself, to allow the viewer to take it in, to possess what one may grasp of its essential nature-- but he, the artist, did not allow for that.

He displayed himself quite dramatically in response by pulling up his own shirt! The audience was aghast. And to a Simple Mind, he was sweet in his own clumsiness and part-ignorance. It seemed more that he was trying to get at the lyrics of the song above, but never did, so mired in himself he was. And it's true, "we may never pass this way, you make me feel like more than a friend; you're the journey's end..."

For this man, the process of life is clearly as important as the result. May he be forgiven for his clumsiness, his brashness and his desire to shock for control; big things most often do come in little packages. This one was no exception.

"There is an appointed time for everything,

and a time for every affair under the heavens..."

~The book of Ecclesiastes 3:1-15



Come to the Water, Light to the Nations

The Servant Song
composed by Richard Gillard
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Brother, sister let me serve you.
Let me be as Christ to you.

Pray that I might have the grace
To let you be my servant, too.

We are pilgrims on a journey.
We are brothers on the road.

We are here to help each other
Walk the mile and bear the load.

I will hold the Christ-light for you
In the night time of your fear.

I will hold my hand out to you;
Speak the peace you long to hear.

I will weep when you are weeping.

When you laugh, I’ll laugh with you.
I will share your joy and sorrow
Till we’ve seen this journey through.

When we sing to God in heaven,
We shall find such harmony
Born of all we’ve known together
Of Christ’s love and agony.

Brother, sister let me serve you.
Let me be as Christ to you.
Pray that I might have the grace
To let you be my servant, too.

At this season, after the feast of Christmas, there comes in the Gospel story of John, the baptism of the Lord. And through this story we learn several important things about the infant who grows to become the Christ. First, we learn that the 'lamb of G-d' is then not a warrior, that in baptism the child is filled with the Holy Spirit of God, that the child is the divine creation of G-d. In baptism, the child is both interiorly and externally announced as a creature with a life in the Spirit. While many faith communities today find it fit to argue and debate endlessly, to schism and separate from others over the nature, timing and significance of baptism, both the Orthodox and Catholic Christian communities see fit to follow both the Torah and the later Christian gospels for guidance on the matter, choosing to christen or name a child before the Lord in its early days, after birth.

In the Book of Isaiah 49-52, there are the four passages about the "Suffering Servant" in which a servant whose identity is unclear, yet this One is to be chosen by the Lord for a particular service. He is not merely to restore the people to a faith, but to moreover be the sign of God's presence in the world. Thus over millennia, the Servant has come to represent both individuals and whole communities in faith. We are called then to be the light of the nations.

In baptism then, one is called in the Holy Spirit to a life of light. The baptized then live in the light, for help to all, to bear the load, to share in community the gifts which the Spirit then brings. Many are baptized as tiny infants with the faith of their parents, a constant light; others come to the waters of baptism as adults to signify that while they may have once seen only darkness, now they see light. Guided by established members of the faith community, the baptism is their exterior announcement, that they, the light of the world, have been made anew, given life by the Holy Spirit. For them, their eyes shine brightly; peace and joy is their heart.