Chronicle of a Silence Endured. Guido da Verona
when our hero was again confronted by his bully after school. The usual crowd was there. When the fist was made and then launched towards him, our hero side-stepped without hesitation and, with unprecedented calm, grabbed the flying wrist with the left hand and blew a devastating punch to the nose with the right. How simple. It was all about focus and stillness; so little of it felt physical.
And that was the end of the bullying....for good. Back at home later that day, he told no one. God favors those who prepare, after all, or does He not?
The Lord will fight for you, and you shall hold your peace.
-Exodus 14:14 NIV
Mom had finally seen the change in her son that was quite positive and long awaited. So, she also took it upon herself to take her 3 children to confession each and every Saturday and to mass each and every Sunday.
“My children”, she thought to herself, “may well not have much in their physical world. I may not be able to give them all I want to give them and all that they deserve. But I will be damned if I don’t give them their faith. I can make them rich in faith. I must make them rich in faith, so that they can understand, as they one day will, that anything can be faced in this life as long as you have faith. We will all pray together every night. We are Catholics.”
“Bless me Father, for I have sinned.”
“Yes, son, I am listening.”
“This week I got into a fight with my sister, Rose, and I called her ‘stupid’ and ugly’.
“Go on, son.”
“And I had a bad thought about my teacher when she yelled at me in front of the class when it wasn’t even my fault, it was Francisco’s, and I wished something bad to happen to her.”
“Yes…I see.”
“And I threw a snowball at a car with a friend of mine when it was storming this week. And the man stopped the car and got out and chased us into the grocery store where we had run to hide, and he pulled our ears and hair and yelled at us.”
“Is there anything else?”
…..
……….
“I had bad thoughts.”
…..
“What sort of bad thoughts?”
“The really bad kind.”
“Come now son, there is absolutely nothing bad that is going to happen for telling me. Remember that God’s son was also human, and He is all loving and all forgiving.”
“I, uh………I wondered what a woman looks like naked.”
“Anything else son?”
“That’s all I can remember father. I’m so sorry for it all.”
“Excellent son….well done. This is a good confession. Ok, you need to remember that your sisters are always to be respected. You are their protector as the man of the house.”
“Protector.”
That word again, mentioned in secret darkness again, caused our hero to break into a sudden sweat.
The priest continued,
“If you get into a fight with your sisters, you have to walk away and try not to hurt them with either your words or hands. And in school, if you have a classmate that is getting you in trouble, then you need to distance yourself from him. You are there to learn. I’m sure you learned now that throwing snowballs at cars is not worth it. It’s also very dangerous and you can cause an accident where people can get very seriously hurt and you can get into a lot of trouble. And finally, for your penance, I want you to say five Our Fathers and five Hail Mary’s. Now repeat the Act of Contrition with me…”
Sunday mass always took place in the same church.
Wreaking Havoc in Favoritism and Separatism
How is religion different from spirituality?
Is there a difference between the two, and if so, how is it determined?
One of the ways I view religion is as a series of boats on the edge of a lake. You are standing on that edge but wish to get to the other side. You choose your boat and row yourself to the other side, then get off and continue on your walk. Religion is the boat that gets you to the other side, to your place of grace with your own God.
Yet one of the major problems I see with many of the religious however, is that somewhere in their journey to the other side of the lake, the attitude is adopted that their boat is the other side; they don’t see that the boat is only an instrument, a vehicle in their spiritual journey. It is not a destination, and that is why religion carries so much potential to upset and let down many of its followers.
Allow me to challenge here on purpose.
The question is one of attachment. In other words, what difference can it possibly make that you are inside say, a green boat, and while rowing you look over to the sides and find others rowing in their red, blue, and orange boats. And so, you point your self-righteous, indignant, and accusatory finger at the other brothers and sisters in their boats, who are just as well-intentioned, just as God-fearing and as motivated as you (and perhaps might be even more so). But you will not have it that way, will you. You believe that your boat is superior and that it entitles you to accuse others of using the wrong-color boat!
On what charge do you make that claim?
Ego:
Erase
God
Out.
Many religious people who are concerned more with attendance and ritual than with spiritual connectedness with God would benefit from the thinking of spiritual leaders, like Gandhi, who teach that if God is being praised, if it leads to a closer personal relationship with Him, there is no such thing as the wrong boat. If the majority of the religious did this, if they stopped to think more objectively about their own beliefs by simply stepping outside of themselves, the only thing that would then matter is that we all as a human species get to the same destination on the other side of the lake irrespective of what is used to get there.
What is more, spiritual persons are free spirits, and thus experience God in a much more direct way, in a way that transcends the ritual and doctrine of organized religion. These souls cannot care less about the color of their boat, not because of indifference towards religion in general, but because they are simply detached from boats altogether. The spiritual understand that religion by itself does not have all the answers, nor does it necessarily lead to contentment - nor personal salvation.
Think of Jesus walking on the water towards his disciples who are tormented by the sight from the inside of their fishing boat. Think about how they were not able to immediately recognize Him. Think about Peter at first crouching in fear then stepping out of the boat, trembling, upon the invitation of Jesus. That is how the miracle of walking on water happened for Peter – by a conscious decision to step out of the boat with a spirit of surrender for his well-being. First, you must unlearn what you have been taught; your preconceived notions of what is and is not right or wrong, what should be and should not be, behind you.
Jehovah’s Witnesses, Protestants, Baptists, Pentecostals, Islamics, Jews, Hindus, Adventists, Catholics, and all the rest.
Does God care about boats?
Is not a boat used to praise God still a man-made thing?
What makes any boat greater than anyone else’s? What great secrets or understandings does one boat hold about God and the Gospels that is above all the other boats? Who knows God better than who?
Just as you don’t understand what the life-breath does in the fetus inside a pregnant woman’s womb, so you can’t understand the work of God, who makes everything happen.
-Ecclesiastes 11:5 NIV
This is the ultimate