"Do whatever He tells you"

Almost two thousand years ago, in a small town in Galilee, a man and woman received each other in marriage. They were Jewish, worshipers of the One True God, and their wedding was typically Jewish. Thus, it was joyful. Worshiping the Creator of all good things, they knew how to celebrate the goodness of marriage, and they held a feast several days long to do so. Further, just as today brides and grooms find joy in inviting to their wedding the church ladies who knew them when they were little, this bride and groom invited a particularly devote woman whom they had known. This woman, a widow, had a son, so they invited him as well. Finally, this bride and groom, in their generosity, even went so far as to invite the son's friends.

They wanted to celebrate. They wanted to celebrate their love for one another, their love for God, and most of all, God's love for them. This is why they went so far to invite even the son's friends. Certainly they knew the mother, probably they knew the son, but the son's friends were fairly recent acquaintances. The son had only been with these men for a very short time, and indeed they were a rough and tumble sort of men. That didn't matter, though, to this bride and groom. Filled with joy and ecstasy, they wanted to share it with the ones they loved and more. So, they invited the son's friends.

However, it seems this young couple was rather poor. They made do with what was available and provided as much for the feast as they could, but it wasn't enough. Before the feast was over, they began to run out of wine. Now, as any lover of the Creator can tell you, it is a tragic occasion to run out of wine at a feast. In a purely material way, it can be like running out of the life of the party. Wine expresses the goodness and fruitfulness of creation. It fills man's heart with mirth, and when drunk appropriately, it leads him to celebrate the goodness of the material world. Running out of wine, then, would have been embarrassing because it would have been an indication that the poverty of this world, the suffering of this world, can overcome the goodness of this world.

Indeed, if this crisis of celebration had been left up to purely natural circumstances, the poverty of matter would have overcome the goodness of matter. But this wasn't the case. No, there were other forces at play at this feast, forces that would not let the play cease on account of poverty. These forces, the widow and her son, would not let the poverty of this world, born of sin, prevail. In their generosity, in their eagerness to affirm the goodness of all that they shared, the bride and groom had welcomed into their lives the very remedy for their suffering. In their love of Love, Love had come to them.

"When the wine failed, the mother of Jesus said to him, 'They have no wine.' And Jesus said to her, 'O woman, what have you to do with me? My hour has not yet come.' His mother said to the servants, 'Do whatever he tells you.' Now six stone jars were standing there, for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. Jesus said to them, 'Fill the jars with water.' And they filled them up to the brim. He said to them, 'Now draw some out, and take it to the steward of the feast.' So they took it. When the steward of the feast tasted the water now become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew) the steward of the feast called the bridegroom and said to him, 'Every man serves the good wine first; and when men have drunk freely, then the poor wine; but you have kept the good wine until now." John 2: 3-10

The servants knew where the wine had come from, though the steward did not. They had seen the "water recognize its creator and blush" as the poet has put it. And, we can imagine, the couple eventually knew as well. They may or may not have known then that Jesus had turned water into wine, but they certainly would have known that God had provided wine. Through servants doing whatever Jesus told them, the eagerness of the young poor couple to celebrate God's gift of marriage was rewarded with "good wine."

If, then, we are called to live in the world but not be of it, we too must emulate all the virtues of the wedding feast of Cana. We must live with an almost rash eagerness to celebrate all that is good. We must live with an overly generous heart even in poverty. We must give out of our love for Love, and in so doing Love will come to us and make up for our shortcomings. We must "do whatever He tells us", so that the normal water of everyday life might not be just for purification, but also for transformation in Joy. In short, we must become like those at the wedding feast of Cana so that the feast might go on - into all eternity.

When we put our hand to the plow, what will spring up?

"Pray as though everything depended on God, and act as if everything depended on you." - St. Augustine

Since writing on Wednesday about working hard and zealously for God, I have been thinking about quite the opposite. Well, what I've been thinking about is not exactly the opposite, but rather the compliment, the harmony to hard work. In particular, I have been thinking about how for every ounce of hard work we put into the Christian life, at the exact same time we should put in an ounce of trust and abandonment to the will of God.

I've noticed that so many things in being a disciple of Christ involve seemingly incompatible paradoxes like this. "The first shall be last and the last shall be first." "The greatest among you shall be your servant." "Whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it." Over and over again, we find that as Christians we must embrace two incredible extremes. We must have magnanimity and desire the glory of heaven, but we must also have humility and despise the glory of this earth. We are called to love our enemy, even though he may truly remain our enemy. We are asked to give up our very lives out of love for a greater life.

As Christians, then, we are called to be extreme in every way, and after writing on Wednesday about the need for hard work, I began to think about how there is also need for extreme abandonment. Like the other paradoxes, this seems impossible to us. It seems that either you work really hard, in which you take things into your own hands, or you don't do anything, and you wait for God to make up His mind about you. How can we apply ourselves and abandon ourselves at the same time?

And yet, there does seem to be a way to do exactly this, but it involves a personal poverty that many of us are simply not willing to embrace. The key to the problem, I believe, is the distinction between the work we do, and the results we see. So often, when we go to apply ourselves in the field of work we do so already attached to the results we will see. We think to ourselves "If I do this, then this WILL happen." It's natural for us to go to work with an end in mind, aiming towards a goal. If we didn't have this goal, we wouldn't work. The true poverty of abandonment, though, is that we recognize when we go to work, God will bring about the end that He desires. We are not the ultimate determining factor of the results of our work; God is.

Indeed, we find that often we put our hand to the plough and we reap exactly the fruits we were looking for. However, just as often, we put our hand to the plough and we find that the result is far from what we had expected or hoped for. We can put in great amounts of effort, pain, and sweat and in the end we are left with a result wholly unlooked for and wholly unwanted. What happens is not what we intended to happen, and we ask ourselves, "Why didn't this work? Why did I not get what I worked for, what I wanted?" We can become bitter, as if God did not answer our prayers. Indeed, from our own point of view it often seems that He has not answered our prayers.

And yet, if we had trust in God and truly united our wills to Him, the experience of disappointed work would be so different. We would find that during the work, we would focus more on the work and less on the end. We would find ourselves doing a better job without the pressure of having to bring everything about on our own. When disappointments came, we would have more peace and less turmoil in our souls because we would know that the true result of our work is not this or that earthly fruit, but rather it is closeness and union with God. We would find that, even if the fruit of our work ends up being disappointing and perhaps even painful for us, the work itself still has value in making us more in love with God.

The value of our work, of our hard effort, then, is not the results we see here on earth, but the results we will see in heaven. The true value of work is that it brings us closer to the greatest worker of all, the Creator and Redeemer. This aspect of work can only be seen, though, if we let go of the earthly fruit. We have to be poor; we cannot attach ourselves to our goals. We must be willing to work hard and allow God to bring us the fruit we need. To be a true Christian, then, a true follower of Christ, we must possess both extremes. We have to work as though everything depended on us, and pray as though everything depended on God.

On fear of hardship and work

From time to time, in the life of a married man, he is briefly relieved of the responsibilities of work and family life, and for a brief moment, he is returned to the state of bachelorhood. On the one hand, these moments act as a type of oasis in that he is reminded of the joys of being on his own and coming up with his own schedule. On the other hand, these moments are times of terrible desert, reminding the man of his utter helplessness and insufficiency. In short, when Liz and Alan left for Memorial Day weekend, I found that I could stay out as late as I wanted, but the apartment and the food were both missing something terribly important.

However, this post is not meant to be about the utter dependence of a man on his family (though that is certainly worthy of a post.) This post is meant to explain what I learned from what I did during the weekend. And what I did was this: I immersed myself in the worlds of other people through the lenses of assorted professional filmmakers trying to win various awards so that they can make money. In other words, I watched a number of documentaries because I finished my book on the first day and didn't know what new book to start.

Thus, I found myself Sunday night sitting in my office becoming acquainted with three young men from the Sudan. The specific documentary I watched was "God Grew Tired of Us", a terrible name for a rather good story (it was made by National Geographic, what can you expect). This particular documentary followed the story of three young men who were just children at the beginning of the civil war in Sudan. These three young men, accompanied by thousands of children, fled their homes out of fear of violence and trekked all over Sudan, into Ethiopia, and finally into Kenya. There, the UN settled them in a refugee camp until the violence was over, and so there they have been stuck for over a decade.

However, in the early 2000's, the United States agreed to allow some of these children, nicknamed "the lost boys and girls," to come to the US as refugees. I assume they did this out of humanitarian concerns and not simply as a premise for a good documentary. Anyways, this documentary follows three of these young men for five years as they become acquainted with living in the United States. During their first years, the young men face a number of staggering obstacles, including retaining their own culture, finding jobs, discerning how to help the people back home, etc. Any one of the obstacles they had to face would have been tremendous on its own, and together they make you wonder how these young men will ever survive.

But they do, and they don't just survive, but at least two of them seem to truly thrive in their own environments. And one of the characteristics that seems to mark each of these young man is a fearlessness when it comes to work. Despite having seen incredible suffering and having been dealt by life one of the worst hands possible, each of these young men were so focused on what they wanted that they were willing to work as hard as possible to achieve it. Indeed, all three young men work two or three jobs, sending back to Africa significant portions of their pay so as to better the lives of the people there. In fact, their dedication to their goals reminded of something I once read about dedication:

"Do you not know that in a race all the runners compete, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. Well, I do not run aimlessly, I do not box as one beating the air; but I pommel my body and subdue it, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified." 1 Corinthians 9: 24-27

The tenacity and perseverance that these young men displayed in trying to better their earthly circumstances reminded me of what I should be doing to better my eternal circumstances. So often in life, it seems that we aim for the easiest way instead of the best. We hope that if we put in the minimal amount of effort possible, we'll sneak by and still have laurels for us to rest on. I know that one of my great temptations is to avoid something when it's hard; to say, "I don't have time; I need to rest."

Yet, I also know that this is not what I truly want, not in this life at least. In this life, we are called to work in the vineyard, to bear the heat of the day with the Lord. We shouldn't want to be workers who lounge around all day, hoping to be called into the vineyard right before quitting time. We shouldn't look to shrug off our crosses when the Person we are walking next too is Our Heart's Desire. Every day, we are given the opportunity through our work to come closer to Christ, and so often through laziness we fail. Yet, if three young men from the Sudan are willing to work three jobs in order to have a better life, shouldn't we be willing to do so much more in order to have eternal life? In order to gain Him?

This too shall pass...

There are so many occasions in our life where we have the opportunity to worry and become anxious. Indeed, anxiety seems to be so common to the descendants of Adam and Eve that an alien coming to Earth would most likely assume that it is part of our nature. Whether it be work, school, finances or just simply the future, we seem to be constantly fretting and worrying about something. For many, their entire lives are spent going from one worry to the next, never experiencing the rest Christ promised to all those "who labor and are weary." (Mt. 11: 28). We become in a hurry to get things done. We compare ourselves to others, wondering why we aren't as perfect as them. And all this time, we are missing out on a Love and a meaning that would satisfy our anxieties. "Our hearts are restless until they rest in thee." - St. Augustine

As with most any part of human nature, men have found a way today to market anxiety. It is the goal of almost all the major news networks to breed anxiety in the souls of their viewers. Fox News, MSNBC, CNN - all these networks aim at making the soul disquieted so that people will feel like they have to watch more. They fill screens with images and stories of evil, suffering, and tragedies. They want to make people so worried about the world around them that they'll keep coming back to catch the "latest." They'll inflate the smallest stories into world ending catastrophes with blazing graphics so that they can sell more advertisement space. Of course, the advertisers don't mind if your anxious, because like every salesman of old they have the remedy to all your problems. The more problems you have, the more "remedies" you'll buy.

But truth be told, many of us like feeling anxious, otherwise we wouldn't so willingly engage in the anxiety of the world. We like the feeling of being at a critical point in our lives or in history, when in truth we may be at an extremely normal point in our lives or in history. Anxiety both begets and is begotten by the notion that we are the center of the universe, and ever since Adam and Eve tried to be like God without God, we've tried our hardest to actually make ourselves the center of the universe. In the process, we've made ourselves miserable with anxiety, but being all important is too important for us to give up. Anxiety gives us a sense of martyrdom, the sense that we are unjustly suffering in a cruel world.

However, the funny thing about true martyrs, those individuals who believe so strongly in Christ that they're willing to die for Him, is that they were often the least anxious people around. Indeed, many of the stories of early Christian martyrs tell how when they were being fed to the lions, they would sing. They weren't singing the blues, though, they were singing for joy, joy at being so near to entering into the Beatific Vision of God. They knew something very important, they knew that "this too shall pass".

What made the martyrs at peace with death was that they clearly saw things as they are. They knew that the minor trials and tribulations of life, such as man eating lions, were rather unimportant nuisances compared to the great undertakings of the Christian life - Faith, Hope, and Charity. For them, living a life filled with these three theological virtues was all important; nothing else mattered. They knew that by living out Faith, Hope, and Charity, they would come into closer union with their heart's desire, God. Only sin could stand in the way of achieving this goal, nothing else mattered. Thus, the only thing the martyrs ever seemed to be anxious about was their own weakness, asking others to pray that they might persevere. The lions didn't scare them, but their own pride and feebleness did. They truly understood the words of St. Paul "Neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus Our Lord." (Rom. 8: 38-39).

The answer to all our anxieties has already been given us, we just need to listen like the martyrs did. "Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you; for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." (Mt 11: 28-30). Amen.

Where the Republicans go wrong but Democrats go right

On Wednesday, President Obama created the news item of the week by stating that he was personally in favor of gay marriage. Now, for many people this wasn't a surprise as that saying "actions speak louder than words" rings too true for this administration. However, words do make a difference, so it was indeed an occasion of note to have the President of the Unite States come out in support of an untraditional definition of marriage. Indeed, the homosexual lobby was very quick to celebrate this as a victory for their side. They saw it as what it truly was, another affirmation of the idea that sex is whatever you want it to be.

As I stated, though, none of this was surprising. What was surprising (somewhat) was the way in which the Republican party responded to this announcement. The Republican reaction was summarized for me by one of my Facebook friends. This gentleman is one of those people we all have as friends on Facebook, someone we kind of knew a long time ago but have never really kept up with for 5+ years. This particular friend of mine is a die hard Republican, and I would estimate that 99% of his status updates consist of repeating the party line. Now, I don't mean to attack a nameless fellow who has no means of defending himself on this blog, I only wish to point out his status update on Wednesday as typical of the Republican reaction. His status update was this: "Now that we know North Carolinians don't like gay marriage, and Obama does, can we please talk about the abysmal economy, thank you."

Somewhere, the Democrats and homosexual groups responded with, "No, allow us to thank YOU." Indeed, Democrats and homosexuals understand something that the Republicans have failed to grasp: the main thing wrong with society today is not economic policy, but moral policy. While the Republican policy is focused on making people richer so as to win their support, the Democratic party is focused on changing their morals so as to win their support. Both are incredibly powerful means of getting votes, but I would argue that one is more powerful than the other, and the Democrats are going after it. If you can change a person's morality to the point that pleasure becomes a right, then you become the party of "choice," "tolerance," and best of all, "hope".

The Republicans have so far ceded this ground to the liberals that I did not hear one Republican stand up and say, "It's a shame President Obama endorsed gay marriage because in so doing he has endorsed immorality." Indeed, some Republicans even seemed to agree that President Obama's view of morality was right. Fox News' Shep Smith, working for what is largely considered a Republican news network, said this:

"What I'm most curious about is whether it's your belief that -- in this time of rising debts, and medical issues, and all the rest -- if Republicans would go out on a limb and try to make this a campaign issue while sitting very firmly, without much question, on the wrong side of history on it."

So, even on Fox News now the acceptance of homosexual marriage is considered to be the right "side of history." Their key concern with the President's declaration was not that it was further redefining morality, but it's distracting from jobs.

And yet, even the Republicans will acknowledge, unconsciously, that the main problem with this country is a moral one. Indeed, a familiar line of argument from Republicans is that many today need to get rid of a sense of "entitlement." They lay the ever expanding nature of government (which is primarily bad because it hurts the economy) at the feet of "entitlement." By "entitlement" they primarily mean a sense that you are owed an easy life, but truly "entitlement" is more of an addiction to pleasure and comfort than anything else. It is a moral sense that the ultimate good in life is pleasure, comfort, and ease.

Republicans, though, often reinforce this addiction to pleasure and comfort by their own policies. They run on the platform "Smaller government will make us all more rich, and when we're all richer we'll be able to pursue even better pleasures." This is why Republicans don't want to make moral issues important, at their very base, they are strikingly similar to Democrats. Until the Republicans change their morality, then, and start valuing true Good over pleasure, they will never take strong moral stands. They will remain the party of the economy while Democrats pursue their policy of changing the people's morality. If we want true change, though, if we want to bring about a true common good to America, a happiness that will fulfill all men, we must fight the moral program of the Democrats with a moral program of our own. This starts in our own lives, our families, and our communities. If we want to see change, if we want to see true "wealth", we must teach people how to live well.

The Joys of Family Life

It is a very easy thing for a man to lose sight of all those things that make life worth living. For some reason, we face the perennial difficulty of continually valuing that which is not truly valuable in our life. Instead of rejoicing in all that is good, we often become worried and anxious about a lot that really doesn't matter. We tend to focus on the little, unimportant things such as whether we have a nice house or car, whether we're meeting our financial goals, or whether we're seen as popular. We feel anxiety over bills, jobs, opinions and clothes. We lose sleep over projects, quibbles, and hurt pride. We forget about all the good, all the love that Jesus has shared with us.

Perhaps one of the most beautiful things about family life, though, is that if we're willing to look, if we're willing to listen, the love we experience in family life will always lead us back to the True, the Good, and the Beautiful. For instance, during the past two weeks, life has been rather crazy in the Anderson household. We have had a first birthday, a major gala, and a first communion. We've had a number of one-time expenses that have made it hard to keep track of finances. We've gone out a number of times with various friends or family, and had other friends or family over. In short, we have had a normal late April/ early May filled with the hustle and bustle that this time of the year entails. Spring has sprung, and the cabin-fevered inhabitants of Virginia have spilled out of the house into a busy calendar.

With such hustle and bustle comes thousands of questions to preoccupy the mind. How are we getting there? What time does it start? How should we handle having a one-year old there? Can we afford doing this? In short, the questions of who, what, where, when and how keep going through our minds over and over again. But every once and a while, amongst the who's, what's, where's and when's, a WHY sneaks in and makes all the difference.

With such busyness, with such a crazy amount of things to get done, the "why" is the greatest source of joy. Of course, the ultimate "why" for any action should be the glory and love of God. Everything we do, down to the smallest task of brushing our teach, represents an opportunity to love and serve Jesus. But one of the particular joys of the married/parent vocation is that the ultimate "why" to all of life's mysteries is wrapped up in smaller concrete "why's" - namely, the family. As a man, everything I do ought to be for God, and this will be my great joy. As a married man, everything I do ought to be for my wife and son, and this will also be my joy.

During such crazy times, then, when it is so easy to become distracted, the smallest things of family life can lead one's soul into peace again. A simple smile from a baby boy, a loving hug from a caring wife, a word of encouragement from a wise parent, these small concrete things can bring our focus back to where it ought to be. These gestures act as a reminder of who it is I'm called to work for. At Liz's and I's wedding, a close priest friend of ours who was giving the homily asked us to look at one another and see our path to heaven. Since that day, I have only begun to understand this. I still don't fully understand it, I probably never will, but in the nearly two years since that day, it has become plain to me that true joy for a married man is found in the love received from and especially given to his family.

Two weeks and One Year

One of my friends, who also has a blog, told me that a primary reason of his for starting such an online publication was to give himself a sense of a deadline. He said he wanted to write more often, and he felt that by starting a blog he would have readers that were expecting him to right. When he told me this, I immediately identified with the sentiment. Indeed, one of the best (and worst) things about having a blog is the belief, whether substantiated by reality or not, that there is this unknown audience hanging on your every word, checking back often to see if you've written a new post. This belief is one of the best things about a blog because it gives you pleasant delusions of grandeur that your are the next Chesterton or Belloc. This belief is one of the worst things because you quickly realize that you are not the next Chesterton or Belloc, and then you  feel like you're letting down your audience when you haven't posted in several weeks.

Thus, when I logged on today to write a new blog post, I was rather dismayed to find out that my last blog post was dated April 18th. Indeed, an overwhelming sense of despair hit me at that point, because I felt like whatever I had to write today better be good so as to appease the angry mob of readers upset over my lack of writing. However, I quickly realized there is more than one strategy for diffusing make believe angry mobs. One can either win them over with greatness so that they forgive you due to your genius, which is the hard and narrow way. Or, one can grovel, seeking pity and explaining why there has been no post for two weeks. This is the easy and broad way, and it is the one which I have chosen to follow.

So, you see distressed reader, it is not my fault. Have pity. The past two weeks have been very busy at work, and thus I have been rather distracted from this blog. It has been in the back of my mind this whole time. I have thought of you, and thought how I was neglecting you. I have tried to think of quick things I could post on this blog, but then I would get distracted by the work I had to do and I would forget to post anything. I was spending late nights and frantic days helping to plan a major event. But now that event is over, and I am back, and I hope to be more faithful to you now. (Disclaimer: The internet can often be a very poor medium for expressing sarcasm. Thus, please be assured that I do not actually believe I am at the top of your internet reading list.)

However, I do mention the hectic pace of my last two weeks as more than just an excuse to elicit pity and mercy from my readers. I also mention this busy time because it proved to be the context for a quite significant day, and quite a valuable lesson. Right in the middle of all the craziness, on Tuesday, April 24, Liz and I's first born son Alan Joseph Anderson reached the remarkable milestone of turning one year old. The day was filled with much fun, including cousins and cupcakes, and many statements to the effect of "I can't believe it's been a year." 

Now, I know that this experience of your oldest child turning one is rather common for most parents (for those who never experience this, I am truly sorry). But even though I am very used to thinking of babies turning one year old, it was quite a different experience to have mine actually do it. Don't get me wrong, the day itself was rather the same as the one before and the one after (though Alan did seem to be in a better mood because everybody was so happy to see him all day.) Rather, when your own child reaches a milestone like a birthday, it becomes a chance for reflection. It becomes a chance to refocus, to recognize how quickly the time we are given by God is going by. It helps us realize that while there might be so much that seems very important right now, there is also so much the really is important that doesn't seem so.

Indeed, in the midst of the craziness surrounding work, Alan's birthday shown as a beacon. It was a reminder of all that is good and important in life. It reminded me of my primary vocation as a husband and father, not as an employee. It gave me pause to consider my little boy, my son, and how he has grown and how he will grow. It helped me realize how much of his formation is still left to his Mother and I, an exciting and yet terrifying task. In the midst of one of the most busy weeks, my son turned one and enjoyed cupcakes with blue frosting. That occasion, that event, will stick with me longer than anything I've done or will do at work. Indeed, it is one of the great joys of fatherhood to watch your child become a year older. It is also a great joy to have such a concrete reminder that work is not everything.