Hungry Hearts

I was recently at a local shopping mall, where I heard the barking of a dog from a pram.  Huh?  Then, I saw a young woman come out of a restaurant to attend to the dog, in the pram, feeding it milk, from a baby's bottle.  I was in shock, being dismayed, horrified and just plain upset.  

My first thought was there are children starving and homeless in the country next door, because of a war, and here is a woman babying a dog.  I saw this as narcissistic behavior, wasting money and love on a dog in such a selfish way, while poor and suffering people need our attention and care.  I was stuck by how wrong this was.  I could have gone totally askew in my thinking, until a thought came to me.  

This woman is lacking something in her life.  She is hungry for something much deeper and not getting it.  So this fluffy little dog becomes the substitute, the focus of her care and love, instead of a real person.  What is going on here?  

I can only speculate from my own stance in life.  Sometime later, I find someone who supports me in my mental discomfort and assures me that I am on the right track - St John Paul II.  His welcome reality check is clear and simple: 

"Only a person can love and only a person can be loved. Love is an ontological and ethical requirement of the person. The person must be loved, since love alone corresponds to what the person is."  

Our world is a fragile place, with more than its fair share of conflict, division and fear.  Within such a world, people are hungry for more than food to eat.  They are hungry for love, for peace, for a sense of security, for belonging for hope.  These are deep, human hungers, spiritual hungers.  They will not be satisfied in individual pursuits, worldly comforts, nor personal abuse of power.    

As we pursue life, healthily nourishing our human hungers, the words of another Pope may speak to us.  They are from Pope Francis' prayer for Grandparents' Day 2024:  

"Lord, faithful God, do not allow anyone to be cast aside.

May your Spirit of love fill us with Your tenderness 

and teach us to say : 'I will not abandon you!' to those we meet on our journey. 

With the help of your beloved Son, 

may we not lose the taste for fraternity 

and may we not conform to the sadness of loneliness. 

Help us to look to the future with renewed hope."

It's never too late.

A great line of Kierkegaard keeps coming back to me, as it makes so much sense.  What was his line?  

"We live life moving forward, looking backwards."  

How true!  Do we ever get it?  

I am presently listening to the Peter, Paul and Mary classic - "The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind".  Is it not obvious?  Yet we keep 'screwing up', as Americans say.  

For St Teresa of Avila, life is all about love.  Quite simply put, God within us is to be found, pondered, revered and lived.  As our God is love, it is all about love.  Know love and live it to the full. 

Yet, we remain self-engrossed, we keep doing the same, old stuff over and over again.  I need, we need, our world needs the revolution of love.   

Chef JP

 

Guess who?

St Teresa of Avila wrote:  "Know that even when you are in the kitchen, our Lord moves amidst the pots and pans".   As I sit through another. heady church discussion on community, I think, "How true".   

We talk forever about themes like community from on high, going nowhere.  I think - Is it not better to stand grounded on terra firma and go from there?   From that perspective, looking at community from the grassroots, the focus is on human friendship and relationships, the nitty-gritty of life.  The challenge is then placed on depthing one's everyday relationships within the context of the sacred, which is at the core of human existence.  Thus, in striving for community, with this mindset in place, we are pursuing a goal that is at the one time truly human and truly divine.  Does this not speak of who we are as church?  

Instead, we so easily idealise life, making it much more difficult and unworldly than it needs to be.  Religion is for both this world and beyond, not just for another life and another time.  Our passion for the deeper, for good, for truth and justice, for union with others and so with God - it all begins here and now, in the midst of who we are and where we are.  

As one may have a passion for cooking, so one may have a passion for life and much more - the divine.  God is found amongst the pots and pans, just as readily as anywhere else.   .

As St Augustine put it -  "When you are all things in all, you will be our common possession, our common peace, our rest, our joy".