Buster Gets Mystical<\/a> Elder Brother Gets Into the Mystical Act<\/a> BUSTER GETS MYSTICAL<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Buster has<\/strong>, of course, been home sick all week, and it\u2019s given him a lot of time to think. Noting that he only fell under the strep bug after all of his many commitments had been met between September and January, he has been pondering the mind and the body. And the funeral of our friend Jane<\/a>, last week, has clearly also been weighing on him.<\/p>\n \u201cThe doctors said Jane<\/a> must have had cancer for 8 or 9 years,\u201d he mused the other day, \u201cand yet she had no pain, no discomfort, no idea she was sick until she was told about it. And then \u2013 once she was diagnosed \u2013 she died within weeks.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cMaybe that was the gift,\u201d I suggested. \u201cMaybe Jane\u2019s time was her time to go to God, but instead of suffering and enduring the chemo and the rest of it when her children were small and needed her to be fully available to them, she was graced with no pain, no illness \u2013 she was spared all of that.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cMaybe,\u201d Buster agreed. \u201cOr maybe your mind plays a part in all of that. Tell someone they have cancer, and suddenly, they die. Tell me I can\u2019t afford to get sick, and I don\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n I gave him my copy of Larry Dossey\u2019s book, Healing Words : The Power of Prayer and the Practice of Medicine<\/em>, and directed him to some stories within the book that explored the whole concept of illness not being able to claim you if it remains unacknowledged.<\/p>\n Being sick, he didn\u2019t bother reading it. But he continued to ponder.<\/p>\n Today, while cleaning up the mess<\/strong> he has made by essentially camping out on the sofa for three days, I found scrap paper with some of his thoughts scrawled on them, and I reprint a few of them here, with his permission:<\/p>\n So many secrets<\/strong> lie dormant in the human mind \u2013 so much untapped potential, perhaps because humanity is unwilling to believe that there is so much more than we can imagine.<\/em><\/p>\n If one believes,<\/strong> truly believes, that illness cannot touch one, do they stand a better chance of remaining healthy? Significantly so? Maybe it can go further than that. What if by merely believing, we could heal ourselves or even walk on water, like Christ?<\/p>\n If you taught a baby<\/strong>, from the day of his birth onward, that he could never be sick, never grow old\u2026could walk on water\u2026if that baby never received any other message but that all of these things were possible, would it be true for that baby? Would it unlock something we have unlearned?<\/p>\n In the Garden of Eden,<\/strong> supposedly there was no sickness, no death. Maybe there was water-walking, until whatever the event occured that became our Original Sin. Maybe the Tree of \u201cKnowledge\u201d was just a bad metaphor, or a distortion of the serpent. Instead of gaining knowledge, Adam and Eve lost the understanding they had that allowed them to conquer illness. And Christ is about restoring that knowledge. <\/p>\n We talked about this over supper tonight. I like seeing the boy trying to work it all out, and wondering, and looking beyond books and everything he\u2019s been taught \u2013 I don\u2019t mind him treading the deep waters, as long as he keeps sight of the horizon. I know the Lifeguard can see him! :-)<\/p>\n I quoted a Vespers antiphon<\/strong> that touched on the theme: \u201cGod planned in the fullness of time to restore all things in Christ.\u201d<\/em> Restoration is what we\u2019re promised \u2013 and who knows if the restoration of what Buster calls \u201csecret knowledge\u201d is part of that.<\/p>\n \u201cJesus was all about teaching us how to advance in our humanity and our spirituality. And he was both God and Man. Flesh and Divinity,\u201d Buster said. \u201cAnd maybe he was teaching us, through his physical actions, he was also showing us what humans could do \u2013 the extent of it \u2013 like walking on water\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n Yes. Jesus said, \u201cif you would have eternal life, you must eat my flesh and drink my blood\u2026\u201d maybe the Holy Eucharist is about much more than just what we think of as Communion. Maybe it\u2019s about restoration of everything we had but lost in that break-up that occured in the Garden of Eden.<\/p>\n \u201cIt must have been a terrible break,\u201d I mused. \u201cIf, as you are suggesting, humanity lost that<\/em> much intimacy (walking-on-water intimacy) with the Divine, we have had 2000 years of the Eucharist and we\u2019re still pretty broken, still far from being restored. Hardly nearer, at all. We are still broken and flawed, selfish and blind. And sick.\u201d Peter, we remembered, holding on to Christ \u2013 that intimate \u2013 was also able to walk on water, until he allowed his fear and humanity to overwhelm him. Even that close to God, he was overwhelmed. Fear overtook him. Yes, that is a tremendous brokenness.<\/p>\n We\u2019re not breaking new theological ground here<\/strong>, of course, and I am sure some are reading this and thinking \u201cegad, what are they doing, here, exploring New Age goofiness and heresies?\u201d<\/p>\n Nah. We\u2019re just talking. I\u2019m just enjoying watching a 16 year old think on it all. He and his brother both<\/em> have a habit of occasionally peering into the clouds and wondering at all that is great. They knock me out.<\/p>\n But they\u2019re both pretty eccentric, too. I mean, we have this heavy conversation and five minutes later, Buster is plunking on a banjo (his wind is still not there for the sax) and flipping the mp3 (or whatever) from Bela Fleck, to Tom Waites, to double-entendre (and gross) songs by \u201cChef\u201d from South Park, and he\u2019s leering in his best Jack Nicholson voice, \u201cdeep down in places you don\u2019t talk about at parties, you want<\/em> me on that wall, you need<\/em> me on that wall\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n Parenthood is such a gas.<\/p>\n See also: Buster and the \u201cgift freely given.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n *** A few days ago, I wrote that Buster<\/strong>, while recovering from the flu was waxing mystical<\/a>. Amusingly, I got some unhappy emails from some Christians who suggested that I was an unfit mother for encouraging my son in his musings by letting his thoughts and reasonings go where they would, rather than snapping the whip and making him recite the old Baltimore Catechism while I bopped him repeatedly on the head with a bible.<\/p>\n I wish I were a better Catholic, and a better Christian, of course, but I think Buster has more than ably demonstrated his rather precocious and generous<\/a> understandings of God\u2019s mercies and mysterious ways<\/a> in the past, and I have no worries that he will drift into \u201cheresies.\u201d The fact is, with few saintly exceptions (and Buster is no saint) most Catholics will step a foot outside the lot markings of our inheritance (Psalm 16) now and again and many will even wonder if they believe at all. As I had written in the previous piece, I have no trouble with my kids treading the deeper waters, as long as they have their eyes on the shoreline; I know the Lifeguard is watching. And of course, I\u2019m watching, too. That\u2019s my job. It\u2019s also my job \u2013 having warned them that a hot stove can burn and a hot date can, too \u2013 to let them discover some things for themselves, even if the process of discovery brings them to exotic or tempting or even dangerous places. Once they stop holding my hand to cross the street, trust and prayer become my two infinitely powerful weapons.<\/p>\n Catholicism is a religion that is best suited to young children and mostly-mature adults.<\/strong> Young children \u201cget\u201d the possibilities of the supernatural. They \u201cget\u201d mysticism and. They \u201cget\u201d that \u201cGod is everywhere,\u201d and that bread and wine may be changed, materially, into Flesh and Blood. While a little one may occasionally be heard in chuch singing \u201chappy birthday to you,\u201d when she sees an altar server light the candles, children understand the hush and wonder of the mass, particularly if they are in an older church \u2013 one that still has stained glass windows and statues for them to contemplate while the gist of the mass goes over their heads. (People forget how instructive and useful those windows are, but that\u2019s another post) Young and more seasoned adults \u201cget\u201d Catholicism when they have reached the understanding that everything is not about them \u2013 that there are things greater than themselves. Sadly, because the church is idiotic, sometimes, in how it goes about dealing with teenagers \u2013 and because many parishes don\u2019t have effective youth programs, and because too many parents think, \u201cokay, we got the kid confirmed and had the party, now he\u2019s on his own,\u201d we lose a lot of teenagers who never find their way back, or only do so after being brought to their knees by the vagaries of life and the world. It shouldn\u2019t be that way, but there it is.<\/p>\n My elder son is very bright<\/strong> \u2013 exceedingly cerebral \u2013 and also very spiritual, but he sometimes puts more trust in the things of the synapses than the things of the spirit, and he is wandering a little. While he is home from school he probably makes mass half the time \u2013 and he does so willingly \u2013 but at school there is no chance that he\u2019s going to make mass. His campus has no chapel, and his warm bed and a late Sunday snooze-fest take precedence over worship, and I pretty much expected that would happen. I\u2019m not happy about it, but I am not shocked, either. I was 20, once, too. Remember what I said about trust and prayer? All I can do is deploy those weapons in the hope that he remembers everything we talked about and taught, and the times when he himself tasted -as I know he did \u2013 the milk and honey<\/a>.<\/p>\n The other night, in the middle of a blizzard, the Elder one stumbled into the house at 4:00 AM with his sweet girlfriend, announcing that they\u2019d decided not to drive back to school in the storm. Good choice. While Sweet Girlfriend dozed on the sofa, he decided to talk religion and intellect \u2013 reason and faith. He began with a quick look at the miracle of Fatima<\/a> \u2013 why, if the church has accepted Fatima as being \u201cworthy of belief\u201d have they done such a bad job of doing the things Mary asked to have done? Why, if hell is less a physical place than a state of being into which we cast ourselves \u2013 i.e. apart from God \u2013 did Mary show the children a vision of hell that seemed right out of Dante?<\/p>\n Good questions \u2013 ones that many Catholics have asked. When Mary said the whole world needed to be consecrated or the \u201csins of Russia\u201d (circa 1917) would \u201cspread\u201d (as they have) throughout Europe and the world, why didn\u2019t the proper consecration happen? Are we reaping the fruits of that disobedience even now? When Mary said, \u201cread this letter to the public in 1960\u201d why was that put aside? Did the popes not do so to prevent a self-fulfilling prophecy, or because to do so would have deterred them from making reforms they deemed necessary? These are questions that nag many (and I wonder about them, myself, now and then), and they seem unanswerable.<\/p>\n My answers to Elder were two-fold:<\/strong><\/p>\n 1) no one ever said the church wasn\u2019t a faulty institution full of people who fail. It has only survived for the last 2000 years because of the grace of the Holy Spirit. Were the Church of Rome simply a man-made cult being propped up by mere mortals, it would have dissolved long ago. God is merciful, indeed.<\/p>\n 2) Perhaps Mary showed hell to the children in the way they could best understand it. God comes to us as He may be understood. Hence, Jesus was a Jew, to Jews. Had he landed in Jerusalem a chubby, smiling Buddha, well\u2026I don\u2019t think he would have had the same impact. And had Buddha been a Jew in China, same thing. These illiterate and ignorant Portugese children might have had some difficulty with an existential \u201chell\u201d but they understood \u201cconsigned to flames of woe.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBut then what about the creatures Mary showed them, the mutant creatures who seemed half animal, half man?\u201d My son asked, \u201cthose are rather sophisticated images \u2013 it doesn\u2019t work with your theory.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cMaybe not, but the very \u201csophisticated\u201d images probably reinforced for them the horrors of evil,\u201d I answered. \u201cAnd maybe it was a prophecy of genetic engineering, of those malleable, uncontrollable embryonic stem cells, which caused so much trouble for Parkinson\u2019s patients<\/a> in research.\u201d<\/p>\n Catholicism has a tradition of faith supported by intellectual rigor. But I\u2019m not the brightest knife in the drawer to begin with, and at that hour, well\u2026<\/p>\n I know my answers did not satisfy him<\/strong> \u2013 but it was by then 5 AM, and little out of my mouth would have satisfied anyone. We talked more \u2013 about the theory some have that both Tony Blair and President Bush will convert to Catholicism when they leave office, about the possibilities some entertain that the current climate in the Middle East seems strangely similar to some interpretations of the Book of Revelation, which state that China and Russia will help mount a war against Israel. We talked about the controversial prophecies of St. Malachi<\/a> and whether Benedict XVI could rightly be considered, \u201cthe glory of the olive,\u201d<\/em> and whether that might be because of his Benedictine name and mien (Olivetan Benedictines) or because his family has Jewish roots, or whether he might not be considered the \u201cglory of the olive\u201d at all, in which case Malachi\u2019s whole debated prophecy falls apart. We wondered whether Pope John Paul\u2019s hastily planned visit to Mexico City, in 1999, and his naming Our Lady of Guadalupe the \u201cPatroness of the Americas\u201d had anything to do with fixing the things left undone from Fatima, if naming December 12 as her feast day had any connection to the 2000 election, which finally \u201cended\u201d on that day. He moved on from there. We talked until 7:00 AM, and about much deeper things \u2013 about the Angels in the Kabbalah, about Augustine and Aquinas and Chesterton and the Holy Eucharist, and about the human mind and the soul and whether the body\/mind\/soul complex is as interactive\/intergrated as we believe. \u201cCan you have mind without spirit \u2013 can you have spirit without mind?\u201d he wondered. \u201cWhy do we need authority, when we have our own reason\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n We meandered through talking points about Terri Schiavo and Humanae Vitae, and the debates about using \u201cheroic measures\u201d to save a life. We talked about what John Paul the Great taught about the value of human life beign allowed to live to its natural end, no matter how tough it is to live or look at.
\nOriginally posted Feb 9, 2006<\/em><\/p>\n
\nOriginally posted Feb 13, 2006<\/p>\n
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\nBuster shrugged. \u201cWhat\u2019s 2000 years to the Eternal God?<\/strong> \u2018A thousand ages in your sight are as an evening past\u2026\u2019 isn\u2019t it great to know that God has kept the faith with us and that Christ is with us, in the Eucharist, till the end \u2013 that his own blood flows within our veins, for a time, touching our mortality with his immortality? What would the world be like without the Holy Eucharist? And how much more can we learn from Christ in that form, with that closeness?\u201d<\/p>\n
\nELDER BROTHER GETS INTO THE MYSTICAL ACT<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n
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\nThis is why Catholicism is worst suited to adolescents and teenagers<\/strong> \u2013 whether the temporary ones or the perpetual ones<\/a>. When the world is all about your pleasure, your nails, your car, your finances, your boyfriend, your cellphone and your angst, it\u2019s tough to focus on something intangible which involves allowing oneself to be vulnerable and wrong, and which also involves some pursuit. When you are not accustomed to hearing the word \u201cno,\u201d Catholicism can seem like The Church of No. When taking responsibility for your bad choices and mistakes is foreign to you, well the idea of \u201csin\u201d and \u201cconfession\u201d all seems so quaintly unnecessary. And we cannot forget that the church herself \u2013 and some of her reps \u2013 is often too slow to deal with her own faults and mistakes.<\/p>\n
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\n\u201cThat\u2019s interesting,\u201d my son said,<\/strong> \u201cthe image of the Guadalupe is the image from Revelation \u2013 the woman clothed with the sun, standing on the moon, guarded by angels. The crescent moon is the symbol of Islam. Now she is the patron saint of the Americas. Fatima was the daughter of Mohammed, who married a Christian and made her stand there, in Portugal. Is it possible that all of this is, after all, connected?\u201d<\/p>\n
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\nMy son brought a formidable and far-reaching mind to the debate,<\/strong> which impressed me and made me glad. But I finally went back to sleep at 7:30 hoping that, beyond all of that rigorous thinking, Elder Son would remember the times when \u2013 the mind quieted \u2013 he could hear the enticing whisper, the one that leads you into the desert and ravishes your spirit. In the end, they pack a deeper punch, and perhaps a more permanent one \u2013 than what Oscar Wilde (the deathbed convert) called \u201cbrute reason.\u201d<\/p>\n