Monday Morning Meditation #100: The Value of Vegetables

Oh, my goodness! As I typed in the title for this post, I realized that it is #100, exactly. It seems pretty amazing that 100 weeks have passed since I have begun writing this column. It is especially amazing because I still have only scratched the surface of all the wonderful information, stories, advice, guidance, direction, etc., that one finds in the Bible. I do apologize for the late posting of this MMM. It is no longer morning. Doah stayed overnight last night, and his hyperactivity kept my attention riveted to matters that do not require quiet concentration.

Now, back to this week's reading. Having completed Ezekiel, last week, I moved on to Daniel. Not that I worked very far through that book...I stopped on the very first chapter on the story of Daniel and his friends choosing to be fed vegetables and water over the royal food and wine offered to them and ended up healthier than their peers at the royal table.

Reading: Daniel 1

Meditation: One could read this story from a literal point of view or from a metaphorical point of view. I read it from both.http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

Likely in the days of Daniel, medicine was not advanced enoughttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifh to know the value of fruits and vegetables over red meat and more popular foods. So, it is interesting to read that somehow Daniel trusted to plain food associated with a simple life. Today we would not be surprised to find that as a result Daniel and his companions were healthier than those who opted for the foods that were high in fat and cholesterol.

Similarly, one might look at a "simple" life versus a "royal" life. While riches (like royal food) might be "tasty" (attractive), they are not spiritually healthy for us -- as we are frequently told throughout the Bible, especially by Jesus in the gospels; simplicity and poverty (like vegetables), as those who have followed in the path of St. Francis and others like him have learned, are healthier.

So, I guess the take-away is what our mothers have always told us. We need to eat our vegetables!

Contemplation: That is far as I can go with you this Monday morning. I now retire to private prayer to praise God for demonstrating to us and telling us in so many ways throughout history that we should concentrate on eating our vegetables and not on the fancier fare of life. I will thank God for giving us vegetables, and I will ask forgiveness for those times that I have bypassed the vegetables and reached for the cordon bleu. I will also ask God to continue to guide me in the decisions I have to make on a daily basis on how simple or complex I make my life. Then I will move on to contemplation, my favorite part of the day, letting God take over the direction in which my relationship with Him moves.

I will leave you now to your prayer and contemplation. First, though, I would like to bring to your attention a Monday morning prayer post that you might enjoy:

Fr. Austin Fleming, priest of the Archdiocese of Boston and pastor in Concord, Massachusetts, posts a prayer each Monday morning that he calls "Monday Morning Offering." I enjoy his prayers very much. I think you also will find them inspirational. He has graciously given me permission to include a link to his blog on my Monday Morning Meditation posts. (During the week, he also posts great homilies and other thoughtful discussions. I enjoy reading those, too, as do readers of this blog who have taken the stroll over to his blog.)

For additional inspiration throughout the week, I would point out two sets of blogs: (1) the list of devotional blogs on my sidebar and (2) my blogroll, where I am following a number of inspirational priests and writers about spiritual matters. I learn so very much from all these people. I highly recommend them to you.

Monday Morning Meditation #99: The Ezekiel Experience

Apologies for missing last Monday Morning's Meditation. (I wonder if anyone noticed!!) Unfortunately, I had a blood pressure urgency and ended up all morning at the medical clinic. My BP rose sharply overnight to 208/117, and this was with medication, not without it. Doctors do not like BP in that range, so I had to spend time with a doctor who kept scratching her head because she could find no reason for the BP, which was registering the same on her cuff as on mine. (I have had these peaks come for a couple of weeks at a time, then totally disappear and be perfectly flat with mild medication for a couple of years, then another two weeks of nonsense. The doctor finally just doubled the med and sent me home. The peaks continued until yesterday; the amount of meds did not seem to matter. Now, back to normal. Dunno how to interpret any of that. Nothing in my behavior -- eating, stress level, etc. -- has changed. Anyway, so for the long diversion. Now, back to Ezekiel, which I did finish this week, ending with a strong curiosity as to why God gave all these specific design instructions if the temple described was never built.

Reading: Ezekiel 45-46

Meditation: I have recently experienced what I might describe ashttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif an Ezekiel experience. Or rather, a combined Jeremiah/Ezekial experience. I have described it in pieces on both on this blog and, in more detail, on Modern Mysticism (the Goliath stories). It also forms one of the stories in my latest book, A Believer-in-Waiting's First Encounters with God. It appears that God gave me to take on the task of bringing to light the evil roaming through our local chapter of the Secular Franciscan Order. No matter how I did it (obviously, not with the greatest finesse), I would come off as nutty at best and carpy at worst. Finally, having spent a great amount of time recently in prayer and discernment, I felt (hopefully, correctly) that God was not asking me to stay any longer with the SFO, and I so I left, as I also related on these pages.

After leaving, I made one last effort to point out the problem of evil to the council, the result of which was that the head of the council, called the "minister", who is part of the problem, gave orders that no one was to talk to me again. (Shades of a children's club!) However, one of the council members came to me in secrecy and told me that she had observed everything that I warned about but did not feel strong enough to fight against. (This is a new council; the previous council saw quite clearly what I had seen and been told to state overtly, but they are now being ostracized because of the formation director, who, in my observation and the observation of several who have left formation because of uneasy feelings -- a sense of the unholy -- appears to be the conduit for the evil; the minister is quite taken with him, unfortunately.) So, like Exekiel, I ran around, saying "bad things are happening; there will be repercussions," while contemporaries were saying, "isn't life hunky dory?", i.e. telling people the nice things they preferred to hear.

Now, as with Ezekiel, nothing seems to have changed -- no temple built, no evil conquered. Being human, I wonder why God put me in this awkward position vis-a-vis peers. That there is evil in the organization, there is little doubt. I no longer have to rely on God to point it out; a number of people have approached me now that I have spoken out, discussing in confidence their uncomfortable experiences, which they have put up with because they believe in the values of St. Francis and hope that this will pass. What I hope (and assume) is that God will send another. I do not believe that God ever abandons anyone to evil who loves God.

Sometimes I wonder if I was too fervent in my taking on this task. On the other hand, Jesus was never gentle with evil, and I think it is reasonable to use Jesus as a model in such cases.

The lesson, I suppose, is one I will only learn over time. I have found that taskings given to me are not only tasks for helping others, but they are also lessons for me -- often in how well or poorly I carry them out, but also the outcome is often surprising. As in this case, where there does not seem to be an outcome (yet).

Contemplation: That is far as I can go with you this Monday morning. I now retire to private prayer to praise God for His constancy in being with us, directing us while not encroaching upon free will, loving us. I will thank God for this task even if I do not understand why I was given it and do not see a positive (or any) outcome, and I will ask forgiveness for any and all mistakes I made in carrying out the task. I will also pray for the spiritual safety of all the good people who remain in the organization. Then I will move on to contemplation, my favorite part of the day, letting God take over the direction in which my relationship with Him moves.

I will leave you now to your prayer and contemplation. First, though, I would like to bring to your attention a Monday morning prayer post that you might enjoy:

Fr. Austin Fleming, priest of the Archdiocese of Boston and pastor in Concord, Massachusetts, posts a prayer each Monday morning that he calls "Monday Morning Offering." I enjoy his prayers very much. I think you also will find them inspirational. He has graciously given me permission to include a link to his blog on my Monday Morning Meditation posts. (During the week, he also posts great homilies and other thoughtful discussions. I enjoy reading those, too, as do readers of this blog who have taken the stroll over to his blog.)

For additional inspiration throughout the week, I would point out two sets of blogs: (1) the list of devotional blogs on my sidebar and (2) my blogroll, where I am following a number of inspirational priests and writers about spiritual matters. I learn so very much from all these people. I highly recommend them to you.

Monday Morning Meditation #93: Tell What You Have Been Told to Tell

I am pretty lazy this morning about writing the Monday Morning Meditation. It is an amazingly peaceful and relaxing morning. I did get up early to attend the 7:30 Mass at St. Anthony's Monastery, which is the story of my life this week (sorry that I have been missing the 7 Quick Takes Friday posts -- I have been traveling nearly constantly). I had set up a trip to NH for this week, related to a mission of mercy, which I cannot do here after all but which I can do long-distance. Go figure! I was going to stay with my brother in Wells, Maine since I always do that when I come home to New England, but he was sent this very week to California (my current abode). Go figure! So, I looked for an adequate substitute online and found this marvelous monastery, founded by Lithuanian Franciscans, and a Franciscan Guest House on its grounds, where we are staying. After returning from Mass and breakfast, I dug into Ezekiel further since I had made it only as far as the first verse of the first chapter last week. Chapters 1-3 are fascinating, and I am happy that we will be reading them soon in our Bible Study Group. While I have focused on verses 20 and 21 of Chapter 3, all of Chapters 1-3 is needed to understand them in context.

20 “Again, when a righteous person turns from their righteousness and does evil, and I put a stumbling block before them, they will die. Since you did not warn them, they will die for their sin. The righteous things that person did will not be remembered, and I will hold you accountable for their blood.
21 But if you do warn the righteous person not to sin and they do not sin, they will surely live because they took warning, and you will have saved yourself.”

Reading: Ezekiel 3:20-21.

Meditation: I have no idea how people can interpret these strange visions that have appeared to the prophets throughout history. I had difficulty interpreting even the one, relatively simple, vision that was presented to me (see Goliath). It took months, someone else's help, and, finally, a locution. Ezekiel did, indeed, get some words to follow the vision, which helped him understand better.

The words are about telling people what God had said to tell them. More important, as one can see from the verses above, they are about obedience. The Israelites had ended up in their dire circumstances, taken from their promised land by the Babylonians, because they had been disobedient. God is now not only sending a warning to them but is also telling Ezekiel that he must deliver the message or be held accountable for not doing so.

Those verses took me back to my Goliath dilemma. I certainly did not want to deliver the message. I am sure, that my having done so, brought about in the minds of some the judgment I had wanted to avert: thinking of me as crazy. After all, it does sound a bit nuts to say to anyone, "God told me to tell you X." My son, Doah, does this frequently -- and I am sure, being as open as he is, he does get tasked -- but since he is mentally retarded, he is already labeled and does not know to worry about being labeled crazy. Maybe I should put all my education aside and become comfortable with Doah's approach. I think God sometimes can work with simple people much more easily than with complex ones because we latter put up all manner of barriers.

Contemplation: That is far as I can go with you this Monday morning. I now retire to private prayer to thank God for giving me the fortitude to deliver a message that made me uncomfortable. I will praise God for the many ways in which He prepared me for doing that. I will ask God for greater discernment at times of His tasking, and I will repent for any and all hesitations I have had and barriers (I think, only temporary) I have put before Him. Then I will move on to contemplation, my favorite part of the day, letting God take over the direction in which my relationship with Him moves.

I will leave you now to your prayer and contemplation. First, though, I would like to bring to your attention a Monday morning prayer post that you might enjoy:

Fr. Austin Fleming, priest of the Archdiocese of Boston and pastor in Concord, Massachusetts, posts a prayer each Monday morning that he calls "Monday Morning Offering." I enjoy his prayers very much. I think you also will find them inspirational. He has graciously given me permission to include a link to his blog on my Monday Morning Meditation posts. (During the week, he also posts great homilies and other thoughtful discussions. I enjoy reading those, too, as do readers of this blog who have taken the stroll over to his blog.)

For additional inspiration throughout the week, I would point out two sets of blogs: (1) the list of devotional blogs on my sidebar and (2) my blogroll, where I am following a number of inspirational priests and writers about spiritual matters. I learn so very much from all these people. I highly recommend them to you.