In death is life

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They who live not for themselves but for him, find in death itself the way to life.

One of the important themes you’ll hear in the talks and lectures by Christian contemplatives, and specifically advocates of Christian Meditation such as John Main and Laurence Freeman, is the concept of “dying to self”. In the contemplative sense, this means connecting with the transcendent and intuitively knowing the transience and insignificance of “the self” or “the ego”. By denying our “self” in contemplation and prayer, and self-denial in word and action, we can achieve great things, such as Burnley’s Pastor Mick…

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O Radix Jesse

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One of the fun family traditions we keep during Advent is the Jesse Tree. A couple of weeks prior to Advent (i.e. during St Martin’s Lent), the kids gather up a few branches, which I decorate with some cheap, battery powered star-shaped lights that I got from Amazon. Then for each day of Advent, we read a kid-friendly bible story and the kids take turns hanging an ornament on the thee, which depicts that story. This is a great way to anticipate Christmas by counting the days of Advent (actual Advent, which starts four Sundays before Christmas and has 22 to 28 days, not the secular Advent, which always has 24). The children really look forward to this each evening after supper and it has the added bonus of introducing them to the Christian narrative in scripture, despite much of society’s reservations about imposing a belief structure upon a child…

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St Martin's Lent and Advent (Part 2 of 2)

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So how does fasting and abstinence aid in spiritual development? Isn’t it all about making yourself feel guilty about eating too much, or eating the wrong thing, or sex? Aren’t these all natural human needs? I’ve already written about how abstinence isn’t about self-deprecation but is about self-discipline and why that’s important here, but allow me to add some additional thoughts on the matter, and specifically the benefits of curbing the most basic human passions…

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St Martin's Lent and Advent (Part 1 of 2)

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If you’re uneasy about the rampant excess of the pre-Christmas season, consider re-introducing the ancient Tradition of St Martin’s Lent: 43 days of fasting, abstinence, and prayer prior to Christmas, similar to the 46 days of Lent prior to Easter. Standing in contrast to the excesses of the pre-Christmas season, St Martin’s Lent refocuses the season on spiritual development… and has the added bonus of shedding the Christmas binge-eating weight before it even happens…

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Being, Consciousness and Bliss (Part 2 of 2)

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The book The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness and Bliss by David Bentley Hart lays out a rational description of God. And while I deliberately refrain from using a rational argument for God in the Apology, I have to say that Hart’s thorough argument is pretty compelling, if not unequivocally triumphant. His first premise, that God is the non-contingent source of all being, is the strongest one and is discussed in the previous post here. The second hinges on the premise that there will never be a material/naturalist description of consciousness, which I honestly find a little weak. Hart essentially dismisses the notion that there will ever be a self-aware AI (which I could buy), but annoyingly never addresses the different levels of consciousness/awareness in nature: From the simple amoeba, which senses the world through simple mechanistic processes, to a dolphin, which is most certainly “conscious”, there is no clear line between which organisms are conscious and which are not, so doesn’t that mean that consciousness does result from increasingly complex physical processes? Putting aside the “Consciousness” argument then, allow me to summarise the “Bliss” argument, which isn’t directly addressed in the Apology at all and is actually pretty hard to refute…

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Being, Consciousness and Bliss (Part 1 of 2)

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Naturalism is a transcendental certainty of the impossibility of transcendental truth, and so requires an act of pure Credence logically immune to any verification (after all, if there is a God he can presumably reveal himself to seeking minds, but if there is not, there can be no ‘natural’ confirmation of that fact.) -- David Bentley Hart, The Experience of God, pp 77

I just finished the book The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness and Bliss by David Bentley Hart. Written as a rebuttal of sorts to the “New Atheists” (or any atheists for that matter), Hart’s book is meant to simply define God in classical theist terms, and not as the anthropomorphic “god” attacked by atheism and even espoused by many fundamentalist Christians. In so doing, he also provides a pretty sound logical “proof” of sorts along three lines of reasoning: God is being, God enables consciousness, and goodness for goodness’s sake (i.e. bliss) must be transcendental. This first line of reasoning, that God enables and is existence itself, shares a lot in common with a lot of the ideas in the Apology but has some really compelling nuances…

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Sanctifying "Ordinary Time"

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The blog posts are a little less frequent now that it’s Ordinary Time. There are actually two periods of Ordinary time, but the post-Christmas / pre-Lenten period is so short, our family really only marks this extended Ordinal period after Pentecost with green trappings around the house, less emphasis on devotions, and more emphasis on getting outdoors (which apparently precludes frequent blog posting). Even though we’re not contemplating the mysteries of the incarnation or the resurrection, there are still ways we sanctify this time as a family…

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The Self-Discipline Lifehack

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What do you seek? Is it to be thinner? To not drink so much? To see friends more? To be less angry? To spend less money? To study more? We’re all after some goal that constantly eludes us. And what do all of these goals have in common? At their root, they’re about self-discipline. Every one of these goals, if they’re worthwhile, relies upon our ability to put aside our short-term pleasure and look forward to a more abstract, less tangible end-state. I’d like to lose weight, but man I could murder a bacon double cheeseburger right now… and Uber eats is just a few clicks away…

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A life well lived

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Meet Sister Mary Joseph who passed away on the fifth of June. Sister Mary was a Carmelite nun with an uncommon backstory. A wealthy heiress, she had all the things most people aspire to in a Western, liberal democracy: She had a nine-bedroom mansion in San Fransisco overlooking the bay, designer clothes including a shoe collection that made Imelda Marcos's "look pitiful by comparison", a contact list of the rich and powerful including Nancy Regan, and had 10 children and 28 grandchildren. But she gave it all up to join one of the strictest contemplative monastic orders for women: The Order of Discalced Carmelites.

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Love in Action

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Allow me to introduce you to Enza Ruscillo. To summarise the linked article, Enza had her restaurant vandalised. Instead of being angry at the injustice to her, especially given the stress she might be under given that Toronto has had one of the longest lockdowns in the world, she advocated for the perpetrator. What’s more, Enza had been giving the man, who’s name is Roger and has mental health issues, free food and a kind word for the past year and a half — again despite the challenges that she’s been facing personally. Now I don’t know if Enza is even Christian, but this is the most Christian thing I’ve seen so far this year. I’ve written about loving those that don’t deserve to be loved in a previous post, but Enza is a great example of this concept in action: Forgiveness, kindness, and compassion. Thanks for being a great example to us Enza!