Author: richardburbach

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Love’s Yearning

We went to a movie last evening and guests are coming for breakfast — time to resort to yet another “all-time-favorite.” You may recall from a post here on Monday:

“Those from a Sacramental tradition are predisposed to encountering the Holy One in “stuff” like bread, oil, water, wine, food, drink; sensually in touch, smell, taste, sights and sounds.”

Well, here is the iconic prayer poem, The Dark Night by sixteenth century Spanish mystic St John of the Cross. Talk about taking sensual prayer to new heights!!!  They say its even better in the original Spanish!

On a dark night,
Kindled in love with yearnings–oh, happy chance!–
I went forth without being observed,
My house being now at rest.

In darkness and secure,
By the secret ladder, disguised–oh, happy chance!–
In darkness and in concealment,
My house being now at rest.

In the happy night,
In secret, when none saw me,
Nor I beheld aught,
Without light or guide, save that which burned in my
heart.

This light guided me
More surely than the light of noonday
To the place where he (well I knew who!) was awaiting me–
A place where none appeared.

Oh, night that guided me,
Oh, night more lovely than the dawn,
Oh, night that joined Beloved with lover,
Lover transformed in the Beloved!

Upon my flowery breast,
Kept wholly for himself alone,
There he stayed sleeping, and I caressed him,
And the fanning of the cedars made a breeze.

The breeze blew from the turret
As I parted his locks;
With his gentle hand he wounded my neck
And caused all my senses to be suspended.

I remained, lost in oblivion;
My face I reclined on the Beloved.
All ceased and I abandoned myself,
Leaving my cares forgotten among the lilies.

__________________

Translated and edited by E. Allison Peers from the critical edition of P. Silverio de Santa Teresa, C.D.

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Good Grief

Grief softens, taunts us into familiarity, befriends us over time and — though uninvited — comes to settle in with us as a respected companion.

At least that’s my experience from the perspective of having lost five of nine siblings. Today is the third anniversary of my brother Art’s death.

You would have liked him — I honestly do not know a person who did not! Of the six brothers he clearly inherited our Dad’s gracious charm and ease with people. He was incorrigibly kind, generous, self-effacing, optimistic and happy. That was quite a feat given our genetic disposition and his ten-year battle with lung cancer.

Art loved cars as did our dad, his namesake. One of my most vivid childhood memories was his purchase of a sleek, white, 1959 Pontiac Star Chief sedan — it belongs in the Smithsonian! Just having it parked in our driveway gave this nine-year old immediate, and fully exploited, bragging rights.

Art’s fascination with cars endured but also signaled a fundamental shift. No longer needing to flash an icon of a financially flush bachelor, over time Art became quite skilled in car repair. He embraced a new focus, new goals. Modesty and frugality became his obsession as Joyce and their three kids became the locus of his pride and uncontested priority.

Always the financial wizard and astute investor, Art became as selfless as is constitutionally possible for a Burbach male. His many sacrifices and deep reservoir of faith in God and other people has been validated in terrific children with whom I am proud to share the family name.

One last, parting gift endures. Honored to be among my brother’s pallbearers, I was unprepared for what I was asked to carry.  Lumbering up a slight incline at Calvary cemetery proved more than I could manage. I buckled under the weight — others had to come to my rescue.  Thus, my brother’s legacy continues to work its way with me.

Being the youngest of a large family is a profound gift. Perhaps I learn from some of their mistakes, though plenty of evidence suggests the contrary. Certainly I profit from their example and wisdom.  I am growing more accustomed to not being the leader, content — perhaps blessed — to follow.

More than ever, I am coming to appreciate what T.S. Eliot expressed so well:

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
__________________
T.S. Eliot’s famous quote is from the conclusion of Little Gidding, the last of his Four Quartets.

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Jeb’s Lesson Plan

Every day, come hail or high water, Jeb the Dog takes me for a walk along Minnehaha Creek. Jeb is especially excited these days because record high water pushes the creek far beyond its banks. Need it be said that neighbors who feverishly tend sump pumps are not nearly as enthusiastic?

The high water enables Jeb to more easily greet Mama Mallard and her five ducklings. It gives him an edge in tormenting Mr. Snapping Turtle. Watching Jeb’s sheer exuberance and feverish freedom makes me wonder if our wonder-dog faithfully takes me to the creek to remind me of a basic truth:

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Jeb’s been with us for almost three years now. He patiently but persistently labors to share with us many truths, adapting his lesson plan with the agility of a master teacher. His core message remains tediously consistent: We urgently need to acquire a new way of looking at ourselves, at the created world, and at God!

The environmental cliff on which we teeter suggests that our head-in-the-sand addiction to immediate gratification is not primarily economic (e.g., portfolio profits), political (e.g., re-election) or technical (e.g., “clean” energy) but spiritual. Jeb might say we are in need of a more fundamental transformation, conversion, metanoia, change-of-heart.

Just before our walk to the creek yesterday I was reading something by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew. He laments that we no longer see the world as gift of God or sacrament of divine presence. We no longer have Wendell Berry’s eyes or heart, becoming day-blind to the grace of the world.  We have become pretty hard-core secularists.

Record flooding on the creek tempts me to despair. At times I fear for our lives and what our children’s lives may be. Perhaps wood drakes, great herons and snapping turtles will do what patriarchs and poets apparently cannot.

Jeb, I need another walk!
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Wendell Berry, “The Peace of Wild Things” from The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry. Copyright © 1998.

Encountering the Mystery: Understanding Orthodox Christianity Today by Bartholomew, Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople. Doubleday. 2008. pp. xviii-xix. Continue reading →

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The Perfect Hamburger

In the Greek classic, The Odyssey, Homer probes the meaning of life. Me? I’m simply in search of a hamburger that tastes as good as the ones I enjoyed with my Dad at Main Street cafes of small Nebraska towns when I’d accompany him on a sales trip.

Imagine my delight when I spotted an article in the NYTimes explaining how to cook the perfect hamburger! Like Homer’s Odysseus I’ve followed more than my share of dead ends and made some pretty serious mistakes.  Here’s what I’ve learned:

First, forget the grill. Use a cast-iron skillet or griddle. The point is to allow rendering beef fat to gather around the patties as they cook. The beef fat collected in a hot skillet acts both as a cooking and a flavoring agent. Grease is a condiment that is as natural as the beef itself.

Great hamburgers fall into two distinct categories. There is the traditional griddled hamburger of Main Street diners like the ones I enjoyed with my Dad. The other is the pub- or tavern-style hamburger, plump and juicy, with a thick char that gives way to tender, often blood-red meat within. Dad never took me into any pubs or taverns so you know the one I’m looking for!

The diner hamburger has a precooked weight of 3 to 4 ounces, roughly an ice-cream-scoop’s worth of meat. Pay close attention to the cuts of beef used in the grind. Home cooks should experiment with blends that contain from 20 to 25 percent fat.

The grind most stores sell is “fine,” which means the fat globules in it are small. That can lead to the dreaded mushy mouth feel of a substandard hamburger. Better to have a butcher grind your meat, asking for a coarse grind so that the ratio of meat to fat is clear to the eye.

Whatever the blend, it is wise to keep the meat in the refrigerator, untouched, until you are ready to cook. Hamburgers are one of the few meats you want to cook cold. You want the fat solid when the patty goes onto the skillet.

Forming the patties is an art. Simply use a spoon or an ice-cream scoop to extract a loose golf ball of meat from the pile, and get it onto the skillet in one swift movement accompanied (for the first burger) with a pat of melted butter to get the process started.

Then, a heresy to many home cooks: the smash. Use a heavy spatula to press down on the meat, producing a thin patty about the size of a hamburger bun. Everyone freaks out about that, explain the experts, but it’s the only time you should be “working” the meat, essential to creating a great crusty exterior in doing so.

Roughly 90 seconds later, after seasoning your burger, slide your spatula under the patty, flip it over, add cheese if you want, and cook the hamburger through.

The hamburger of my dreams has no cheese. But I concede some gild the lily. If you must, the experts say most people don’t melt the cheese enough. Put it on the moment the patty is flipped and let it drape the burger. Which cheese you use is a matter of preference. American cheese is designed to melt and it has 50 percent more sodium than Cheddar or Swiss, so it adds a lot of flavor.

In choosing buns the bun-to-burger ratio is incredibly important. You want a soft bun, like a challah or potato, but whichever you use it shouldn’t overwhelm the burger. They should be as one.

Finally, choose your condiments. You know the ususals… they are a matter of preference. But again according to the experts, do not overdress — people really over complicate hamburgers. We substitute complication for simplicity, sharing and loving those we are with.

Sounds a lot like spirituality. What I wouldn’t give for just one more burger with my Dad in a cafe on Main Street in a small Nebraska town.

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You may find the entire June 24 NYTimes article on which my reflection is base at: http//nyti.ms/1rqWdZ2  —  It contains a great explanation (and recipe) for Pub or Tavern burgers for those who prefer these over my favorite diner burger.

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More than Blackberries

Victorian poet, Elizabeth Barrett Browning writes:

Earth’s crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God:
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes,
The rest sit round it, and pluck blackberries.

Theologians haggle over the “hypostatic union”. Those who truly comprehend the creation accounts of Genesis — or the Annunciation of Mary — spontaneously “find God in all things!”

To pray “on earth as it is in heaven” presumes we understand that to “have dominion” precludes domination and demands we protect the creation from every form of degradation.

Those from a Sacramental tradition are predisposed to encountering the Holy One in “stuff” like bread, oil, water, wine, food, drink; sensually in touch, smell, taste, sights and sounds.

Earth’s crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God:
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes,
The rest sit round it, and pluck blackberries.

On this long lush summer day, take off your shoes and pray a while.

_________________
Thanks go to Fr Dale Korogi for inspiring this reflection with his use of the Browning poem yesterday in his Corpus Christi homily at Christ the King Church.  The quote is from Bk. VII, l. 822-826 of Browning’s poetry.

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Family Values

So what does Jesus have against families?

His parents were saints! He seems to have had a great extended family and lifelong relationship with cousin John. We’re led to believe he had an ideal relationship with his father and followed in the family business. When it counted most it was his mother who stood by him.

If you go to church this weekend you’re likely to get a very different impression. The saccharine images of Christmas greeting cards are gone. Forget any recollection you have of Rafael or Botticelli. No Madonna and Child this weekend!

Today is the official start of summer. Maybe the people who set-up the Common Lectionary think we won’t notice — church attendance is way down at this time of year. Here goes:

For I have come to set a man against his father,
and a daughter against her mother,
and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law;
and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household. (Mt 10:35-36)

Really makes you want to run off to church, doesn’t it?  Or, maybe run out of church! Who needs this? I am absolutely certain this Gospel will not be selected for use by the Catholic bishops at their Synod on the Family in October!

But, wait! Words of my dear, deceased mother — the one who insistently trucked the family off to church every Sunday — come to mind. This is a time when she would interject her invariably profound, “You know, life is strange.” Because, it just is!

Our family flunks the Holy Family test. For generations we have wrestled, not always successfully, with alcoholism. Marriages in our family end in divorce at the same rate as the culture as a whole. We have a sibling who has turned into a recluse and ignores overtures even for some minimal communication. Need I continue?  You can likely supply your own list!

This Gospel surprisingly became Good News when I actually heard the introductory lines: “A disciple is not above the teacher… it is enough for the disciple to be like the teacher.” Jesus is teaching what it means to be a follower. No, these are not marching orders for apostles — the message we eventually will be sent to proclaim!  We’re not adequately prepared for that yet.  Remember: the word disciple means a student!

This is our apprenticeship where we need to learn the discipline of what it means to be a disciple. Remember the setting… this is not the Sermon on the Mount preached to the masses. The setting much more resembles what a coach would say at half-time to a team at the World Cup: “Okay, team, we are in the match of a lifetime. This is about all the marbles. Here’s what we need to do. Play hard! We can win this! Don’t lose focus… remember why we’re here!”

Tough as it may sound, this is exactly the message this Christian apprentice needs to hear. Life is strange! Keep your eye on the prize. Keep your priorities straight! What’s really important?

This is precisely the message our congregations, cities, corporations and nation need to hear as well. When we get these priorities straight, we will finally be prepared to proclaim with confidence and conviction: Gospel of The Lord!

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For God’s Sake… and Ours

If you have not read yesterday’s post, “What Are We to Say” please do so.  Because…

Today I want to lower frustration by emphasizing how concern for God’s creation — in and of itself without any self-referential pretense as if it were God’s “gift” to us, but rather “entrusted” to us for our care — cuts to the core of our spirituality and moral responsibilities.

By way of inspiration, I offer a quote from the Joint Declaration by Pope Francis and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew made from Jerusalem on May 25, 2014:

It is our profound conviction that the future of the human family depends also on how we safeguard – both prudently and compassionately, with justice and fairness – the gift of creation that our Creator has entrusted to us. Therefore, we acknowledge in repentance the wrongful mistreatment of our planet, which is tantamount to sin before the eyes of God. We reaffirm our responsibility and obligation to foster a sense of humility and moderation so that all may feel the need to respect creation and to safeguard it with care. Together, we pledge our commitment to raising awareness about the stewardship of creation; we appeal to all people of goodwill to consider ways of living less wastefully and more frugally, manifesting less greed and more generosity for the protection of God’s world and the benefit of His people.

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You may read the entire ten-paragraph statement by Francis and Bartholomew [here].

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What Are We to Say?

Imagine, 74 grand nephews and nieces! Yes, my 34 nephews and nieces collectively have 74 children. In fact I’m so old, and my family so prolific, that some of my nephews and nieces are grandparents!

Though I have no children of my own, I take my avuncular role seriously and this is the source of a recurring anxiety. Often I shutter and am down-right scared. I envision my grand nieces and nephews when they are my age. With creased brow and shaking head they ask, “What were you thinking? Were you blind? Why the hell didn’t you do something?”

Perhaps this blog is preemptory self-defense… I imagine one or more of the 74 — perhaps my namesake, Richard James — combing through these posts in fifty years. Ideally, they will constitute something of an ethical testament. We were not totally oblivious, self-consumed and ignorant. Were we?

If I am not careful you will soon stop reading, reflexively click the “close” button. Please don’t! My challenge is to remain engaging about a topic that should scare us to death. Otherwise, how are we to explain to Richard James in 2064 that not all of us lived in the United States of Amnesia!

Moments ago, morning news reported on Mankato, MN — home of a state university as well as the billionaire owner of the NBA Minnesota Twins. The Minnesota River which runs through town was already swollen above flood stage by unseasonably high precipitation. Seems the river and city sewer systems simply could not accommodate seven inches of additional rain. The city is shut down. Crops on more than 100,000 acres of nearby farmland have also been lost.

Sad… tragic, in fact! Thank God no deaths have been reported. The Red Cross and National Guard immediately responded. Families are regrouping and neighborhoods will collectively shovel mud from homes. Mankato will be declared a national disaster area and FIMA will help return the community to some semblance of the status quo.

Then, I fear — and this is the source of my worst fear — we will all return to our respective states of amnesia. Civic leaders will don smiles for Fourth of July parades on Main Street. Banners will proclaim, “Mission Accomplished.” We will collectively settle back to our routines because good hands are taking care of us.

Please resist the sudden urge to “close”! There is overwhelming evidence that all is not right with the world: ice caps are shrinking, glaciers are receding, sea levels rising, permafrost thawing, species of plants and animals vanishing. This is happening amid sustained droughts, heavy rains, heat waves, wildfires, floods and unforeseen threats to food production.

Here’s the blunt truth expressed by Colman McCarthy: “From the grimness, it’s not a wild conclusion that earthicide is happening — the self-destruction caused by human choices…  carbon dioxide is causing the planet to gag, as if gasping for air that for billions of years was breathable but is no longer.”  Writing amid yet another heavy rain I envision this as creation’s desperate convulsion to cleanse itself of the filth and degradation of ravenous human consumption.

As we gather along Main Street for Fourth of July parades and assemble lawn chairs for fireworks displays we might ask: “What will history say about our generation?” Will our sense of civic duty recede with the last strains of a John Philip Sousa march? Will we simply fold up our lawn chairs and return to our respective states of amnesia?

What response will we have for our grandchildren in 2064? What are we to say to Richard James, … or Eleanor, … or Jack, … or Graham, … or Paige, …?

They need our answer NOW!

__________________

Gore Vidal coined the term “United States of Amnesia.”

The quote from Colman McCathy is from an essay well worth reading [link]

 

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“Primary Wonder”

Problems connecting to the internet prevent me from posting what I have written on our laptop.  Being restricted to an iPad provides the opportunity to share one of my all-time favorite poems:

PRIMARY WONDER

Days pass when I forget the mystery.

Problems insoluble and problems offering

their own ignored solutions

jostle for my attention, they crowd its antechamber

along with a host of diversions, my courtiers, wearing

their colored clothes; caps and bells.

And then

once more the quiet mystery

is present to me, the throng’s clamor

recedes: the mystery

that there is anything, anything at all,

let alone cosmos, joy, memory, everything,

rather than void: and that, 0 Lord,

Creator, Hallowed one, You still,

hour by hour sustain it.

— Denise Levertov

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When Its No Fun Anymore

Prayer is easy only for beginners and those who are already saints. During all the long years in between, it is difficult. Why? Because prayer has the same inner dynamic as love, and love is sweet only in its initial stage, when we first fall in love, and again in its final, mature stage. In between, love is hard work, dogged fidelity, and needs willful commitment beyond what is normally provided by our emotions and imagination. 

As we grow deeper and more mature in our relationships, reality begins to dispel all illusion. According to Ronald Rolheiser, it’s not that we become disillusioned with the one we love, but we begin to recognize that many of our warm thoughts and feelings we thought were about the “other” were really about ourselves – What we thought was prayer was partly a spell of enchantment about ourselves.

At this critical moment of recognition in any relationship, disillusionment sets in. It’s easy to believe we were wrong, misguided, deluded in feeling as we did. Here Rolheiser is brilliant: Disillusionment is a good thing. It’s the dispelling of an illusion. Disillusionment in love is actually a maturing moment in our lives!

In the spiritual life this is when we typically stop praying. Oh, we likely will not call it that. We are apt to disguise our avoidance with excuses or explanations – not enough time, just taking a break, my work is my prayer, too busy serving others. Fill in the blank! We will fight tenaciously to cling to our familiar preconceptions, a pleasing appearance, “reward” as the economy of grace, and our self-satisfied illusion.

What is needed when the bottom falls out – and it will – is just the opposite. We need to just show-up, minus warm thoughts and feelings, stripped of our enchantment with ourselves. Rolheiser sees this as the beginning of maturity. When we say, “I no longer know how to love,” or “I no longer know how to pray,” then we begin to really understand and grow in our capacity to love and pray.

These words of admonition and encouragement brought me back to something I first heard fifteen years ago as a reflection during Evening Prayer at St John the Evangelist (Anglican) Monastery in Cambridge, MA. It is a text I keep nearby and resort to with some regularity:

Silence has become God’s final defense against our idolatry. By limiting our speech, God gets some relief from our descriptive assaults. By hiding inside a veil of glory, God deflects our attempts at control by withdrawing into silence, knowing that nothing gets to us like the failure of our speech. When we run out of words, then and perhaps only then, can God be God. When we have eaten our own words until we are sick of them, when nothing we can tell ourselves makes a dent in our hunger, when we are prepared to surrender the very Word that brought us into being in hopes of hearing it spoken again–then, at last, we are ready to worship God.

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Initial quote and following references to Ronald Rolheiser are from Prayer: Our Deepest Longing. Cincinnati: Franciscan Media, 2013, pp 45-6. Final quote about “Silence” is from Barbara Brown Taylor, When God is Silent. Cowley Publications, 1998.