Don't Disturb Me

What a wonderful mystical morning walk I had today. The bare winter trees were silhouetted against the fog with drops of dew revealing spider webs and things normally hidden from view. The sun was feebly attempting to make its presence known but had not the strength yet to be victorious. Reflecting on the Great Artist , our Creator & Lord, I am constantly in awe over the palette of mornings He presents to me. In the past week we have had cold rainy mornings, warm humid ones, bright & sunny, cold & snowy, brown leaves and dead grass, frozen ice and snow covered landscape, and during the course of the year many more wide varied mornings and even one with hurricane winds. My first entry into this blog spoke to how greater evils are on the horizon. Check this story out from Boston. http://www.catholicculture.org/news/features/index.cfm?recnum=60261 This kind of attitude that government can force the Church to do immoral things is going to spread in many directions. The agenda of the Culture of Death is to make us killers, all equal participants in their evil deeds. Then I turn to two items that were in the local paper that speak to our materialistic and narcissistic culture http://www.2theadvocate.com/features/36210499.html and http://www.2theadvocate.com/features/36210409.html Teens are going to keep on spending. Ain't gonna let a bad economy get in my way and with apologies to Ms. Dugas but 20 handbags including her $400 Coach is too much. I'm sure she is a good kid and I am not trying to single her out, for all I know my daughters probably have twenty handbags. I would like to see some of that money go to feeding the poor. When you see the conditions that others live in this world a bad economy may not deter our spending but it means less and less for the neediest of the poor. We are a materialistic society on this conveyor of consumption. Children feel entitled (not be left out with the rest of us Americans) to goods and services and we parents feed the beast with $400 handbags and the latest cell phones. It's time to quit and return to a simpler life, get off the conveyor. In T. S. Elliot's poem The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock of which I can still to this day after 40 years from my English literature class, recite. Prufrock laments "Do I dare disturb the universe?" " In a minute there is time For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse". I don't wish to get into analyzing Mr. Elliot's great work but I rather think that in our current day and age it seems to me that we don't want the universe to disturb us. We no longer belive as Socrates once said "the unexamined life is not worth living" but rather the examined life is a pain in the rear. Morality - too much trouble. I mean why let that get in the way. I live a very busy life. I work hard and then I have to deal with...economic struggles...what purse to buy...how will I be entertained... what will I wear...what am I doing this weekend...decisions and decsions...my plate is full...I don't want a God who...interferes with my lifestyle...my sexual relations...will create moral dilemmas...wants me to part with my money...wants me to carry my cross and follow Him...wants me to live a pious and virtuous life... I don't think so! My idea of God and religion is one that has a peaceful coexistence with everything I do. It doesn't weigh me down. It doesn't make me examine my conscience, look at the moral issues going on, talk of sin and sinning, remind me that I'm a sinner. I want a feel good God. I deserve it along with everything else don't I? It's that or no God at all. This is where we are in dealing with the majority of Americans and many of them are Catholics. In 1910 G.K. Chesterton wrote "The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried." Catholicism requires an examination of your life. It requires you to be disturbed at times. It requires you to make sacrifices and to considers others more important than you. It requires giving time to God to better know Him and love Him. Beware when you make God out to be what you want Him to be, you will be left with a world devoid of love and men will making decisions to the demise of all of us.