Just Pondering the Why of It All

You have made us for yourself, Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.

— St. Augustine

In the book, The Holy Longing, Ronald Rolheiser describes a Jewish legend about what happens to the soul just before it enters a body:

[Hush]

…just before God puts a soul into the body, that soul is asked to forget its preternatural life. Hence, just as the soul enters the body, one of God’s angels presses the baby’s mouth shut, as a gesture that, during its earthly life, it is to be silent about its divine origin. The little crevice below each person’s nose is the imprint of the angel’s forefinger, sealing your lips [as in, hush, be quiet]—and that is why, when you are trying to remember something, during your ponderings, your own forefinger spontaneously rises and rests in that crevice.

In a post written two months ago, I described an image of time as a flowing river as seen from God’s point of view outside of time:

In less than a blink of God’s eye, we are dropped into this river of flowing time. We live our lives, and then are plucked back out. In that brief moment of existing within time, we are transformed. We are transformed, through our choices, into either a heavenly creature or a hellish creature…

The word “sex” comes from the Latin word secare, which means to cut. To be sexed—to be male or female—literally means to be cut off from something, to be un-united, much like a branch is cut from a tree. Ronald Rolheiser, again from The Holy Longing, says that each of us have known this fact from our earliest moments in life, alone in a baby crib, crying for someone to feed us, to change our diapers, or just to hold us. We sense very early on that we are alone, cut off, that we belong to something bigger than ourselves. There is something in every molecule of our bodies longing to be re-united. Re-united to what? We are not sure, but the drive is there and we try to satisfy it by many different means.

This drive, this urge, this energy to re-unite constitutes the fire of our spirituality. How we choose to channel this energy is a very important question. Are you going to prematurely release this energy on mere whims and distractions, on things that promise immediate but temporary gratification? Or are you going to hold it in reserve so to speak, be disciplined, and engage it fully and wholely (holy?) in the appropriate manner, respecting yourself and others in the process? Are you going to channel your spiritual energy in ways that build harmony, integrity, health, and life? Or are you going to channel your spiritual energy in destructive ways that cause disintegration, dis-harmony, dis-ease, death?

I remember a discussion with some friends back in my early years of college. You know, that time in your life where you think you know all the answers. The debate was between “Does the end justify the means?” or “Does the means justify the end?” I remember applying those questions to the meaning of life, and settling on “the means justify the end.” (I later found out that this also applies to moral decisions.) Life itself is not an end, it is a means. Just live it.

So why did God drop us in this river of time, to learn to live a life, to learn how to channel our spiritual energies, to make choices with our free will that seek either harmony and unification or discord and disintegration? And if we make the wrong choices, are we really going to be separated from Him for all eternity? Is it His choice or ours?

I have this feeling that this mystery is a big secret.

And as he raises his forefinger over his lips, he thinks, “I wonder…”

New Look

CowPi v2.0
The old CowPi v2.0

Well, it seems to be that time of year again when I remodel the ol’ weblog. Welcome to CowPi version 3.0! The colors are a bit bold for my personality, but hey, I’m trying to expand my boundaries. Hope you like them? I have also used some fancy CSS tricks, but those under the hood, so to speak. I wish there was a method to get away from the rectangular format, but that seems the most efficient way to pack a lot information into a browser window.

CowPi v1.0
Old, old CowPi v1.0

You can view the old versions by clicking on the images at right. This year’s model went back to a traditional weblog format with a sidebar containing a massive amount of links. I added the sidebar for several reasons. One, weblogging is partly about community (just like faith in Jesus), and links to other weblogs help build a sense of that community. Besides, I got tired of waiting for another page to load that just contained a bunch of links. Two, lately I have noticed myself looking through other weblogs’ sidebars looking for new things to read. Three, there are a bunch of little extra things that can be added in the sidebar.

Some features of the new version: unvisited links are purple, and visited links are green, except for links in the horizontal menu and sidebar. A green check mark should appear next to visited links within the sidebar. There are two ways to get to the permanent link for a post, either by the post title, or the little πλ link. (πλ are the Greek letters pi and lambda—pi lambda, permanent link. Get it?) I also added a generous Creative Commons license to cover the minimum of rights I wanted to retain.

There are a few other things in the works. I plan to rotate through different quotes at the top of the sidebar, and maybe rotate the subtitle. Maybe a recent comments list. I also need to work in my cowpi logo into the design. Not sure where to place it.

If your browser displays something that looks messed up, please email me.

Four Levels of Happiness

Several of the Beatitudes talk about receiving blessings (happiness) from suffering. To me, this seems like a paradox, or better a mystery. How does all of this suppose to work? I trust in the Lord that it does, but I do not necessarily understand how.

Henri Nouwen and others have described suffering as a cup of sorrow, and from within this time of sorrow and pain, the seeds for happiness, the cup of joy, are sown. Life is drinking from both these cups. This is a poetic way to say that sorrow is temporary and that we can learn from it, and eventually be better off for having had the experience. I can understand this on an intellectual level, but it only goes so far.

The other night, I heard Fr. Robert Spitzer briefly describe four levels of happiness and then much of it all fell into place. The four levels of happiness are:

  1. Material-physical satisfaction (immediate gratification)

  2. Ego satisfaction (personal achievement)

  3. Contribute, or make a difference beyond yourself (good beyond self)

  4. Faith and surrender to God (ultimate good)

Happiness, like most things in life, is not an either/or situation. It is based on a continuum or spectrum, with material happiness on one end and spiritual happiness on the other.

[Spectrum of Happiness]
Spectrum of Happiness

This spectrum analogy is not like a thermometer of happiness. One does not necessarily progress from physical happiness through ego satisfaction to contributory satisfaction and finally to surrender-to-God happiness. Although this is a possible scenario, I doubt that very many people can pull this off. As Jesus said, “…it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” (Matthew 19:24)

The more likely scenario is partial happiness. It easy to conceive of a situation where one is materially happy but not spiritually happy. Conversely, one can conceive of situations, i.e. the Beatitudes, where one is materially unhappy but spiritually happy. It also goes without saying, one can be unhappy on all four levels too.

The spectrum analogy does a good job of describing the length or effectiveness of happiness. Material satisfaction, like anything of this world, is temporary. The happiness received from riding a roller coaster, if that is your thing, lasts only as long as the ride does (and maybe for a few moments afterward). Spiritual happiness lasts a much longer time.

And now for some random thoughts based on the four levels of happiness.

Pride denies spiritual happiness because it works for ego satisfaction and immediate (or delayed) gratification. Humility, on the other hand, foregoes material happiness to put God and others before oneself, and thus contributes to spiritual happiness. Remember Jesus’ two commandments to love God and to love others? They are geared toward building spiritual happiness, not material happiness.

The other major sins like selfishness, greed, avarice, gluttony, etc. all seem to work on the first levels of happiness too. I am tempted to say that all sin arises from pursuing happiness in the first two levels only, but I can imagine situations in which someone makes a choice to help others for the wrong reasons. Intention cannot be separated from action.

The world, our culture, if you have not noticed by now, cultivates, caters to, and demands that happiness be based only on the first two levels. There are some aspects of our culture that promote the third level of happiness, but they are not located in the cultural center.

I do not think that forcing oneself to be unhappy on levels 1 and 2 will necessarily result in happiness on levels 3 and 4. It is more about living in the present moment and putting others and God before yourself. If this incurs some level of unhappiness or suffering or sacrifice on your part, then you can find joy in the fact that you are serving God and others, i.e. levels 3 and 4.

The previous paragraph could imply some sort of ascetic life style which I am not advocating. Some mortifications like fasting and abstinence have their place. As Karl Thienes once wrote, “In fasting, we are free from compulsion and self-centered living.” This has implications for at least level 1 happiness.

The four levels of happiness provide another way to look at the metaphor of the cups of sorrow and joy. Instead of joy coming after sorrow, which can often be the case, joy can coexists with sorrow at the same time. In re-reading Nouwen, this was probably his intent for the metaphor. It is in our brokenness that we are closest to God.

Finally, the fourth level of happiness depends on a little thing called faith. Without faith, why bother?

(More information about the four levels can be found at Life Principles.)

Let them paint themselves into a corner…

Father God, I call to you. Jesus once gave us these words through John: This is the verdict: “Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.”

Let those men and women who choose hatred over compassion become keenly aware that the choice is theirs. And let them become aware of the option of turning to love, of turning to truth, of turning to the real Jesus.

Lord, I claim them for your work, and for salvation. Separate away from them the influence of evil, and draw them to repentance. Send harvesters who speak their language to cross their paths.

Let them paint themselves into a corner with their own sins, then offer them Your way out. Break them like the dawn breaks and begin a new and glorious day in their lives.

And, Lord, please forgive me. You know the sins I commit.

Through Christ Jesus I pray, Amen.

— Anita Van Ingen (prayer made in a comment to this post)

One Thing

If I traded it all
If I gave it all away for one thing
    Just for one thing
If I sorted it out
If I knew all about this one thing
    Wouldn’t that be something

— Fingers Eleven, refrain from “One Thing”