Adjusting the Eyes of My Heart

I am trying to use my heart to see. The “eyes” of my heart often see fuzzy images, like

the way our eyes see before they have adjusted to new glasses. The corrective lenses
of TOB are slowly adjusting my vision, and I gradually see things in new ways.

Looking out at the deck, the other day, I saw seed pods, those “helicopters” had blown
all over it from the windy days we have had. My first thought was hearing Christopher West’s
voice saying “If you look at creation, new life, the fertile seed, is everywhere.”
Yes, those little things are the next generation. They are the male, seeking to
implant themselves into the fertile ground. My second thought was that there they are,
impeded in their mission by my plastic deck. Left there, behind that plastic
barrier, they will never achieve their purpose, which is to germinate.

The artificial barriers that impede life in our culture are many and varied.

Of course there are the obvious methods of artificial birth control that are often literally
plastic barriers, but the artificiality that impedes other aspects of life and growth can also be
a barrier to our becoming fully who we are meant to be.

Social media is a great example. We have “relationships” with people that we spend a great
deal of time cultivating. Actually, what we are cultivating is a persona, the “person” that we want
those “friends” to see. The barrier between us, a completely artificial way of communicating,
impedes the mission of what relationships are intended to achieve. To hear the tone of a voice,
to see the look in the eyes, and to just experience the presence of another human being, is to
experience the reality of what it means to be human. There are risks, and there is discomfort,
but there is also depth of feeling.

So many things are tarnished with the brush of artificiality. Things we eat, things we wear,
games that we play, sometimes even the way that we experience God.
We are so used to being entertained, to needing a performance in order to find meaning in
an experience.

We have lost the ability to just sit in the stillness and know that God is overshadowing us.

Lord, open the eyes of my heart and give me clearer and clearer vision.
Thank you for this tremendous gift. Please keep me close to your heart and let me
never lose the corrective lenses that I have been given.

The Odd Couple

I had the great pleasure of seeing a good friend perform the role of Felix Unger in “The Odd Couple”a while ago. It is, of course, a very funny play, and all of the actors did a wonderful job of portraying the characters. As funny as it was, I found it to be really poignant and sad, as I was reflecting on the story later.

Here is Felix, a husband and father for 14 years, who is now completely unmoored and drifting after being cast off by his wife. He admits to his many faults and he feels absolutely terrible about what has happened. He is still that husband and father, but he is now thrust into the position of homelessness.

Home is so much more than an address. It is an identity. The place we call “home” in this life is meant to image the place that we are going to.

Felix comes to the home of his friend Oscar, a divorcee himself, and Oscar offers to let him move in, creating an “odd couple”. These two attempt to create a “family” but it is a disaster before it begins. The humor is drawn from the truth. These two men are very different, and although it is never stated, there is an effort to show Oscar as a male figure and Felix as the more feminine. He goes about trying to make a home, keep it a home and find the peace of place that he had in the heart of his family. His type A intensity and all of his anxieties make for many humorous moments. He never stops lamenting the brokenness of the home that he left, and there is nothing right about this new situation. He is lost and he is trying to find himself, but he never will because the self is a creature made for marital union, and cut loose it drifts and can’t settle.

He constantly talks about how he failed in his marriage, and he shares the joy that he found in his family with a couple of girls that Oscar has asked to come over for dinner. He shows them pictures of his kids and his wife, and they all end up crying over their losses. Gwendolyn is a widow, and Cecily is divorced. Felix' heart is still home with his wife.

The situation with Oscar devolves into something untenable, and Felix realizes that he needs to leave. Once again, “divorcing” from a person that he cares about.

At the end he is moving upstairs with the girls, another level of loss and another step in the wrong direction.

Felix was a man who had been living a life of union, and as that union is broken he becomes less

than the part of the marriage that he has lost. His “better half” was more than half. She held his heart.

Directing Desire

Sexual desire is a calling, it is an awakening to the holy call to union.

When we feel that desire in us we naturally seek the other.
The other is the place that union with God will be found.

As Christ desires the Church, so we desire each other, as He designed.

We are pulled toward each other and the fulfillment of that desire should culminate in the marital
embrace where it is directed upward and it bears fruit.

When we feel that desire and we then direct it at something other than the fruitful embrace of marriage,
we are not answering the call. We are putting it off, or putting ourselves first.
God calls us to the embrace and when we put something between ourselves and the fruitful embrace,
it is a misdirection or a disordered desire. When we direct or encourage the desire toward anything
other than the gift of that union, we are inhibiting Grace.

The Grace flows from the sacramental union, in the same way that it flows from the Eucharist.

We cannot have a true romance that is anything short of the total gift of self, because Christ did not hold
any of Himself back from us. He is the whole and entire Spouse.

In season 1, episode 2 of Amazon's “Legion”- David Haller, the main character, is in love with Syd,
Because of her "power" she can’t be touched. In one scene David says “I just want to hug you”
and Syd says “you know that’s not possible.” Then she says “we’ll have a romance of the mind”
and he agrees, but the desire is obviously still there, still burning in him.

A “romance of the mind” is an incomplete romance. Chastity is always ordered toward union. Either
the bodily union of marriage, or the lifelong union to Christ, in religious life.

In mastering our desires, we are still acknowledging them. We seek that one that we will unite with in
the sacramental embrace, but the embrace is the ultimate goal.

In the romance between Christ and the Church, there is a physical gift of self and a holy reception of
that gift. A romance of the soul is like a chaste engagement, the union of the bodies should be the
ultimate goal.

In a Christianity that is only Spiritual, there is an incomplete romance.

We can look at David and in a way we see Jesus.

He wants to touch us, but for so many people the only thing possible is a “romance of the mind”.

A romance of the mind is a beautiful first step, but it is never the ultimate goal.

Christ wants to touch us, to have the physical union that is the ultimate goal.

There are those who say that priests shouldn’t have to forego sexual intimacy,
and yet many of these people are foregoing the ultimate goal of Christ with His Bride!

First Post- If You're Here, You Must Know Me

I am just starting this blog to post thoughts about my journey through the study of St John Paul II's Theology of the Body.
I am certainly not a profound thinker, but the Holy Spirit is so generous with His lights, that I have to put it down somewhere.
I am reading, thinking, and "pondering" these things, and I find that it is easier to pull my thoughts into line if I write as I think.
I hope to post something every couple of days, maybe even with a picture, but we shall see....

These thoughts are pretty personal and since they are from God straight to the heart,

sharing them is taking a big risk. Sometimes I think we are supposed to keep them in our hearts as gifts from the Holy Spirit. Sharing can dilute the intensity of the gift. I think sometimes we are called to share, because the Holy Spirit needs to say something to the world.

I am going to share some things on this blog, and I hope that they maybe be edifying in some way, some day. It is what He is asking me to do, so I will!