Chistmas Sounds

Some sounds easily spook Baxter.  The sound of the vacuum cleaner drives him nuts.  He runs and hides as soon as the motor is turned on.  Loud sounds usually startle him.  His head and ears go up.  His eyes open wide.  He is ready to run if the sound continues.  Baxter also gets spooked by the sound of crackling plastic from water bottles being smashed or from packaging on various products being torn open.  Generally, it must be the frequency at which the sound travels that sets him off, because some noises don’t raise any reaction.  The fire siren, thunder, car horns--he sleeps right through all of these.  For Baxter, some sounds, because they are unusual, are threatening even when there is no danger, and others, which are meant to signal danger, fit into the frequencies of his familiar world.

We are more discriminating when it comes to sounds that set us off.  Nails on a chalk board can create an automatic reaction, but usually we hear in a certain context that tells us what the sound might mean.  A siren going off in a parade signals fun and celebration.  A siren in the dead of night marks an emergency.  Car horns sounding can be a friendly “hello” or draw attention to our annoyance at another driver.  A clap of thunder can be fascinating over the Grand Canyon but startling and frightful over the roof of our house.  We hear more than frequencies.  We hear meanings and intentions in the sounds of our world.  As believers, we are called to hear God.

Our faith tradition throughout its long history has always held that God speaks to human beings.  From the Word that brought forth creation, to the Word of the prophets that called for repentance and renewal, to the Word that became flesh in Jesus, God is sending a message to us in various ways.  These are not just random sounds, but purposeful ones, like Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony whose movements carry through a theme to a triumphant “Ode to Joy”.  God sounds a theme throughout history that reaches its crescendo in Christ and is heard in the song of the angels, “Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace to those on whom His favor rests.”  This is the rich and full sound of the climax of human salvation that continues to be proclaimed until the end of time.

There are no scary noises in the sounds of Christmas, but the carols, greetings and bells have deeper meanings than a nostalgic melody or pleasant sound.  They signal God’s closeness to our human condition, His power to overcome its darkness, and His promise never to abandon us to our sin and death.  The sounds of Christmas speak a deep mystery of divine love so profound and intimate that it sounds like the human heart beating with the life-blood of divine grace, like a baby’s cooing over God’s delight with His creatures, like a cat’s purring for the perfect harmony of the creature and the Creator in the redemption of the universe.

At first, these deeper Christmas sounds may seem strange, but don’t be afraid.  LISTEN!

The Christmas Promise: A Purr

Only cats purr.  No one is quite sure where it came from in the evolutionary line of development, but everyone agrees that this distinctive sound and vibration marks feline happiness and contentment.  Baxter purrs at the drop of a hat since he has grown older.  Scratch his neck, his chin, his chest or his belly, and he immediately starts to reverberate with the familiar sound of pleasure.  He starts to purr as soon as he jumps on my lap and begins pummeling my belly with his front paws to find his comfortable spot.  He purrs more than he meows and hisses, so I presume he is a happy cat.

Purring has a contagious effect.  When I pet my purring friend, I begin to feel relaxed and comfortable.  Something about that spontaneous vibration and its soothing sound calms anyone who comes into contact with it.  Studies have shown that a cat’s purr can lower the blood pressure of those in contact with it.  It exudes peace and contentment, and it spreads these qualities in the atmosphere around it.  Happiness is infectious, even across species.

 Jesus’ birth touches us in a similar way, but with a more profound impact.  When God chose to become one with us in His Son, He did so not reluctantly or grudgingly but with delight and spontaneous joy.  Such a divine intervention cannot contain itself.  It overflows.  The Christmas blessing generates a human condition marked by peace, genuine joy and relief from the drudgery and toil that are the effects of sin.  These are the signs of grace incarnate.  These are the hallmarks of the messianic age, and all of us who are citizens of God’s Kingdom are invited to share in these fruits.  Taste the sweetness of the Lord up close and personal.  An intimate God shouldn’t frighten us, any more than a purring cat does.  Rather, the God born on Christmas spreads His delight and peace to those who welcome Him into the lap of their lives to rest content there.

But we have to listen carefully to catch the divine purr.  At this time of the year it’s hidden in a child’s giggle, in the words of a familiar carol, in the warm wishes shared in cards and greetings, in the “ah” we hear when someone opens a surprise present.  God is happy to be with us, and we benefit from His happiness in the deep joy and peace we find when we live in His grace.  Like cats, we’re not sure how it works or why it happens this way, but we know we are blessed when we hear it.  Have a “Purrfect Christmas!”

Advent Reflections: The Stretch

Baxter makes a point of stretching after a long nap.  He gets up and first curls his back with his legs pushed straight up.  Then he steps out extending one back paw and then the other away from his body in a three legged stance.  Lastly, he reaches his front paws in front of him and sticks his butt in the air and pushes against the floor.  All of these maneuvers are to stretch his body back into alignment after a lengthy period of twisted relaxation.

Stretching is important for Baxter and for us.  After Baster’s routine, I can see him come alive again.  He’s alert and agile and ready for another meal.  Doctors and exercise gurus tell us that stretching before and after vigorous exertion helps prevent injuries and keeps muscles limber.  Stretching should begin the warm up and close the cool down to any extended exercise routine.  It not only completes the toning of our muscles, but it also keeps the ligaments and tendons that tie them to our skeleton supple and strong.  Physically, stretching helps to tie our body together well.

The same holds true for stretching our spirit.  We need regularly to move our spirits in ways that extend their normal reach and direction.  We all have our comfort zones where we can move through life almost asleep.  We know what to say, how to respond, whom and what we like and dislike when we’re in these places.  We are curled up, comfortable and content in this state, and we don’t usually appreciate anyone disturbing our positions.  Let me be, and I won’t bother anyone.  But left in this attitude for too long, our spirits grow soft and weak, and we are vulnerable to injuries we never saw coming.

Advent stretches our spirits as the Spirit of God stirs in our midst.  We see this in Mary when the Spirit overshadows her and asks her to take on a role in salvation history she never foresaw.  Her mind had to think outside the box about God’s ways with humankind.  Her heart had to trust in the goodness and integrity of what she could not fully understand.  She had to continue to care for others—her cousin, Elizabeth; her betrothed, Joseph—even while she was uncertain and confused about her own situation.  Her spirit was stretched in mind, heart and action by what happened to her with the angel’s announcement, but because of this extension of her life into the very history of God’s life with us all, she “magnified the Lord” and “found joy in God,” her Savior.  Because God stretched her life beyond the boundaries set by conventional religious wisdom and she followed the divine exercises well, Mary stands before us now as a great and strong example of faithful discipleship.

So don’t just jog through Advent to get to another Christmas.  Do some stretching exercises with your thoughts about this season, with your attitude toward it, and with the kind of generosity you offer during it.  Your faith will grow stronger for it.

Advent Thoughts: A Calmer Christmas

Preparing for Christmas is a lot calmer these days.  When Baxter was a kitten, it was a contest of wills, and I usually lost.  The first Christmas Baxter and I shared, I was decorating the tree and suddenly discovered a pair of eyes staring back at me from the inside of the tree. Yes, it was Baxter.  Tree decorations, nativity figures, garland, even Christmas pillows he considered his personal toys to chew, bat about, hide and sleep with. Christmas was a season of taking, not giving, for Baxter. He took whatever he wanted from the tree, shelves, wreaths, etc., and he used it for his pleasure and whim. They were all toys to entertain him and discard when something better came along.

Baxter is calmer about Christmas now. He may take a casual swipe at a tree ornament, but it ends there. He enjoys lying in front of the lit tree and staring at the twinkling lights.  He seems to like the music. But, for the most part, he can’t be bothered with the rest of the paraphernalia of the season.  Baxter has grown up.

Our faith calls us to grow up at Christmas. We can easily miss this invitation, because so many fancy, cute and romantic creations distract us during this season. The popular message is, “Make Christmas beautiful, tasty, sparkling, and spend what you must to get it that way.” Christmas gets reduced to toys not just for our children, but for us. We play with the “decorations” for the season to brighten our lives and satisfy our pleasures. The presents, the parties, the goodies and the packaging occupy our time and interest, and their meaning gets lost in the preparations. This meaning is the full story of Christ’s life.

Too often we limit the message of Christmas to Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem. But that’s just the beginning.  The full message is what Jesus said and did throughout the course of His life to His death and resurrection. He brought hope to the hopeless.  He spoke of God’s love in ways that broke down the barriers preventing that love from touching various human conditions.  He reversed the order of privileges in the world, lifting up the lowly and sending the rich away empty. He touched the untouchable; healed the incurable; ate with the riff-raff; forgave the condemned; was generous to the undeserving.  Finally, He died unfairly, apart from most of His followers, an apparent failure.  All of this pointed to what was to follow:  the transformation of the human condition by the power of God raising Jesus to new life after physical death.  This is the complete Christmas scene that the stable only hints at.  An adult Christmas looks for more than the trappings of this season.  It looks for the whole story of how God saved us from sin and death.  It is not always a sweet and delightful tale, but it is a profoundly meaningful one, one that can sustain us long after the decorations are put away.

Christmas is a wonderful time of the year, made even more wonderful by those who understand the full meaning of this season. We celebrate the birth of a divine love so deep that it embraced the whole gamut of human life, even dying to give new life to all. When we grow up to Christmas, we stop making toys for ourselves from the decorations of the season and start living seriously in the wonder of God’s love.

After a while, Baxter learned to celebrate Christmas differently; maybe we can as well.

Advent Thoughts: Cat Time

Baxter has an internal clock that is set by his stomach.  He knows when it is time to eat.  At 5:00 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. he is ready to chomp on the food the second it appears.  If it is just a few minutes late, I hear about it persistently.  Like an alarm that won’t shut off until the button is pushed, Baxter cries for his food no matter what else might be happening until it is served for his satisfaction.  There is no patient waiting on his part, only impatient nagging.

Children can get that way about Christmas.  Their internal clocks are set by the merchandizing industry to begin wanting the “must have’s” for this year in early October.  TV, internet and peers stoke this desire with their enticing demonstrations of what the latest fad can do or how it can add to one’s image.  These promise the “best ever” Christmas, and they wow us with the innovations of technology and fashion.  Our children get excited and fidgety for the “big day”.  We get anxious about finding the right present and paying for it.  No one is at ease with the season.

God tells time differently, and Advent is based upon God’s time.  It is a season of patient waiting for something that is not clearly seen or completely understood.  Unlike Baxter before a meal or our children before Christmas, Advent seeks to shape our desires to be more open, more receptive and accepting of God, however the divine mystery comes into our lives.  Advent seeks to whet our appetite for the holy become incarnate in our midst in whatever form the Word made Flesh might show us now.  Those who held a preconceived idea of who the Messiah was and how He would come missed the true Savior born in simple surroundings of ordinary parents in a small town.  Advent is meant to prepare us to receive the unexpected ways of God that fulfill the promise of salvation from sin and death.

To do this, God waits.  He waits for life to throw us a few curves with disappointments and losses.  He waits for us to become more humble about what we can do and more open to His grace.  He waits to teach us that waiting isn’t time wasted, but time ripening until it’s ready to receive what God has to offer in His Son born among us.  All this waiting changes what we desire from living, so that we can learn what true hope is—not biding our time until we get what we want, but trusting in God’s love for us until we accept what He gives us as the source of true happiness.

Cats and children are often impatient.  We are sometimes catty and childish.  Still, God waits for each of us to grow up in the faith, and provides another Advent to do just that.

Cat Power

The lion is considered the “King of Beasts”.  On the plains of Africa, the lion is the top of the food chain.  He is the predator who sets the order of hunting for food and all the other species fall in line behind.  The lion is muscular with sharp eyesight, speed and dexterity.  It overwhelms its prey and kills quickly.  It takes the choice pieces of flesh first and leaves the left-overs to those down the pecking line, first in the pride and then among the other carnivorous plain animals.  The lion’s kingship is held by brute force and physical prowess.  When age or sickness weakens his strength, another lion takes this particular king’s place, and the former head is soon forgotten, often left to die because it is no longer strong enough to hunt.

Baxter is no lion.  When he was younger, he was a feisty kitten, and he would like to wrestle and bite at all kinds of objects, including my finger or leg at times.  He thought himself king of the roost, and unless he got out of control, I never disillusioned him of his self-image.  Once in a while, life would do that to him.  He would encounter a BIG cat or dog on the other side of the window, and quickly his lion heart would sink to hiding under the bed or in the crook of my arm until the beast passed.  When courage is based on physical strength or force of will, it only takes another with a little more strength or greater position to drain it.  My cat quickly chickened out when faced with uneven odds.

“Christ is King!” we proclaim on the last Sunday of the liturgical year.  But the Lion of Judah is no beast.  The power of Christ is not a physical force imposed on others or the will of the ruler intimidating His subjects into submission and conformity.  The power of Christ is the force of the divine-human character to influence others to respond to its self-sacrificing love and generous grace.  Christ’s power comes from within Himself as God made human in perfect integrity.  All that is of God and all that is truly human is brought together in a perfect identity we call in theology the hypostatic union.  No one else has this kind of perfect integrity between the divine and human, but everyone else is invited to draw on Christ’s integrity to find harmony and communion in their lives.  Christ’s power is a shared power from its one source in God-become-incarnate.  It will not intimidate or force itself into our lives because it respects itself and us too much.  God gave us free will, and in Christ there is perfect freedom of the will to unite with God.  These will not be compromised, even if people turn away from Christ’s call to follow Him as disciples. 

 The power of Christ the King is the power of a greater vision of the truth of life, the power of genuine love, the power to offer hope in the face of any darkness.  It is the power to lift others up rather than put them down.  It is the power to persuade and encourage rather than force and intimidate.  If we live in Christ, we have this power available to us to do God’s work in the world by feeding our souls on the Body and Blood of Christ at the Eucharist.

Baxter is a real pussycat, lots of bluster but a softy in the crunch.  Christ is a powerful predator, but He conquers by offering Himself for the ones He loves and enticing them to Him by this selfless sacrifice.  What a strange and wonderful God we have!

Cat Speak

I have a passive fluency in “Cat”.  I haven’t learned to speak it, but I have learned to understand certain words through their context.  For instance, the high pitched, strung out, muffled meow means, “Feed me now!”, if it occurs in front of the food dish, or “Give me a drink from the faucet”, if it is delivered while sitting on the rim of the tub.  The low pitched, groaning meow arising from the pit of the stomach means, “A hair ball is on the way.”  Full throated cries while standing in front of a closed door mean, “Open it so that I can decide whether or not I want to go there.”  A grinding sound fixed on one tone signals, “This is my turf.  All other cat types get out of here.”  It took me some time and experience to learn to understand these messages.  After all, I wasn’t raised speaking “Cat”, so I learned this language only after living with Baxter and paying attention to his habits and ways of communicating.  Now, after many years, we can have a lively exchange at times, though it usually consists of two scripts.  Baxter keeps insisting on something, and I keep responding with “No,” “Wait” or “Later”.  Eventually, he gets what he wants.  (Yes, I admit it.  He is spoiled.)

Conversation is an art.  It is not scripted.  It happens when two parties communicate with each other in such a way that the communication itself creates the message.  Conversations involve give and take, which leads to new understandings and ways of living with each other.  A true conversation never begins with conclusions.  Even the positions or opinions that the partners may hold at the start are not taken for granted.  They are explored together to gain deeper insight into why each person holds the convictions he or she does and what these reveal about them.  The point of a conversation is not necessarily an answer to the problem we are facing, but a bond with each other that allows us eventually to find an answer together.  Only humans and higher beings can have conversations.  With lower creatures, like cats, we may have messages sent, received and sent back, but not genuine attempts to get into each other’s heart and mind to find our common ground.

Faith sets us up to have a conversation with God.  When we believe, we are interested in getting to know God for who He truly is.  We want to understand God’s viewpoint, empathize with divine concerns, and work with God to solve our common problems, and God promises to do the same with us.  We know this because in Jesus God took on our human condition as one with us.  He knows our language from the inside out, and He seeks to use it to create a bond with humanity based upon mutual respect, understanding and love.  But how often do we deal with God and with each other in “Cat” speak?  We just send messages, most often demands, and expect the other to follow them.  We don’t want a conversation.  We want to get our way with each other, and when we don’t, we’re frustrated and upset.  Our faith calls us to something more than this superficial way of relating to God and each other in God.  It calls us to a communion of life in God.

It begins by allowing conversations to happen.  Pray as if you are talking to God over the back fence.  There’s no agenda, no conclusions, no demands, just getting to know each other by sharing what is going on in your life.  Then move to talking with each other as if you are praying—with respect, openness, interest and concern.  Now your faith becomes real because it colors the way you relate to others and your God.  Keep doing it, and one day you will discover you are speaking “God”.  It’s the lovely language of prayer and of honest and genuine conversations with each other.

Catch Me If You Can

If I am away for a while, Baxter likes to play a game with me when I return.  He crouches with his front paws down and his back ones up and stares at me with a funny “growl”. When I catch his look, he takes off running. At first, I didn’t understand the game, so I would just laugh and continue about my business. But then, he would return, and do it again. This time running half way and stopping to look back at me. Finally, I caught on to my part. I was to run after Baxter and tag him when he stopped. Sometimes he would try to hide himself by stopping with his head under the bed and his butt sticking up in the air.  My job was to grab him around the middle and say, “I got you!”  Then he would roll over for a quick belly scratch, and depending on his mood, either start the whole game over again, or call it quits.

This silly game of cat antics reminds me of a serious part of divine tricks. God sometimes plays a game of “catch me if you can” with us. He runs ahead of us and invites us to follow. We can’t always predict where He is going to go and how He will present Himself when we get there.  Especially when we have been away from Him for a while, God wants to engage us in a personal chase. Can you find Him and keep up with His antics?  Sometimes we expect God to be sedate and formal, and God chooses a different way to picture Himself for us.

 Maybe He’s a thoroughbred running at full speed and urging us to run along-side to feel strong and free. Maybe He’s a clown doing outlandish postures and gestures to get us to laugh at ourselves and life in general.  Maybe He’s a silly cat provoking us to pay attention to Him after periods of lonely neglect. God has many faces to show us. His transcendent love comes in ways that can be unconventional and unexpected. While He always plays a good game with no malice in mind, God does not have to follow our rules when engaging us. He can change the playing field, reset the time period, reconfigure the teams and reassign the scoring mechanisms. Then we are left with a choice.  Either we play the new game on its new terms, or we leave the game and pout about sitting on the sideline with nothing to do.

The spiritual life is not a single, straightaway track. It is a cross-country route with many challenges and unpredictable situations along the way. God leads the way, but we sometimes have to look for Him and how or where He is running. He urges us forward, sometimes with a stare, sometimes with a “growl”, sometimes teasing us with only a glimpse of Himself, and sometimes stopping to rest along the way. But He won’t stop moving through the changes of our lives and calling us to play along with Him. At first, we might not figure out what the game is, but if we keep engaged, we eventually will discover how to have fun with it.

“Catch me, if you can!”  God says. We won’t do it, but we sure can enjoy trying, and become holy in the process.

A Tender Spot

Cats’ bellies are a vulnerable spot for them.  They guard their underside carefully, and at first, they don’t let anyone touch them for any reason in that tender spot.  I had to learn this the hard way from Baxter.  He loved to be petted and brushed from when he first arrived in my house, but when I went to pat his stomach, he reacted.  He cried, flipped over and ran away.  It took a long time for him to trust me enough to expose his sensitive underside to any touch, much less, a brush’s bristles.  However, in time, Baxter softened.  He began to trust that I wouldn’t take advantage of him or hurt him.  He came to appreciate a simple pat on the stomach or the gentle stroke of a brush to remove the loose, downy white hair there.  Now, he voluntarily rolls over from time to time to get a little scratch or gentle rub to assure him that everything is right with the world for the moment.

We all have our vulnerable spots.  It may be those places in our personality that we feel inadequate.  It may be those jobs we don’t like to do or don’t do well.  It may be certain subjects.  Maybe it’s death, our own or another’s; maybe it’s our marriage or our children’s relationships; maybe it’s certain secrets we hold about the past or present activities.  Whatever it might be, there are things in our lives we feel uncomfortable talking about, looking at directly or revealing to anyone, even ourselves.  When they come up, we quickly push them aside, change the subject, leave the scene or snarl a remark that signals to anyone present, “Get away!”  We protect our tender spots.

Privacy is a good quality in this world of total disclosure on Youtube or Facebook.  Not everyone needs or deserves to know everything about us.  We protect what we cherish, and we harbor precious feelings by holding them close and sharing them only with the most trusted family and friends.  Here is where God comes into the picture.  Can we trust God enough to expose the most private, tender and vulnerable aspects of our lives to His grace and mercy?  It may not be easy at first.  We may think we don’t measure up to what we should be as believers and faithful followers.  So we hide our underside from divine consolation and help.  We craft our sin to be acceptable. We pose our weakness to be normal.  We mask our insecurity with bravado and bully strength.  We never admit, either to ourselves or our God, the deeper desires we hold, some bright and hopeful, and others dark and despairing.

We dream of happiness in our later years and for our children’s lives.  We hope for a world of peace.  We enjoy the beauty of creation and the sparkle in a child’s eyes.  We seek revenge for hurts and rejections.  We envy others’ good fortunes.  We desire pleasures that are beyond our reach and gratifications that twist our relationships and pervert their growth.  All of these hidden dimensions are the stuff of prayer.  Light and dark, positive and negative, sprung from grace and sprung from sin, we bring these desires to prayer to magnify their goodness and to deflate their evil through the love of God for us.  Prayer is like rolling over and allowing God to touch the tender spots we hide from daily and common view.  Through it, we learn to trust that God will not take advantage of our vulnerability to harm us, but will bless it to become the instrument to save us.  When we can allow God to touch our tender spots, we know a bond has formed which cannot be broken.

Too Much For Baxter

Recently, I was watching a football game on TV where the competition was very tight.  The two teams were battling it out for the whole game, and the score ended in a tie, forcing an overtime period.  In overtime, the game came down to a goal-line stand where my team had to hold its opponent out of the end-zone from the one yard line for a win.  The tension mounted; the excitement was electric; my nerves were on end.  The ball was snapped.  The running back lunged for the goal line.  The defense closed from both sides and behind the line.  The whistle finally blew, and the ruling on the field was no touchdown.  I leaped off of my chair with a shout and began jumping up and down in celebration.  Baxter got scared, so scared that he ran out of the room and lay down in front of the door in case he needed a quick escape from this madman.  I was elated.  Baxter was fearful, confused and unimpressed.  We shared the same moment, but we read it in very different ways.

You see, I was a die-hard fan of the winning team.  Baxter was a fan of neither team.  Fans get charged by a team victory, but those on the outside don’t feel the same way.  They look upon all the hoop-la as at best, nonsense, or at worst, mental illness.  They fail to understand how something like winning a game can gather so much energy and mean so much to a fan.  They may concede that winning is nice, but it doesn’t hold much significance beyond that pleasantry.  To the fan, it makes his or her day.  It creates a memory that will be part of the team lore for decades.  It sparks enthusiasm for the next game, and creates an attitude that carries over into the week ahead.  To the neutral observer, the game is just a little entertainment.  The win is nice, but it will soon be forgotten.  It was an interesting diversion in the day.

We need to remember this difference in perception when we try to evangelize.  We come to the table committed.  We are God’s loyal and true fans in Christ, and we wish others felt like we do.  So we might be tempted to get carried away with our enthusiasm and the urgency with which we try to convince others either to come back to the Church or begin the journey for the first time.  We cherish the sacraments and the traditions that mark our lives.  We are passionate about these and the convictions they embody, and sometimes we can’t understand others’ apathy or coolness towards them.  We want others to believe so much that we might try too hard to convince them of its value.  Then they respond like Baxter to our over exuberance.  They get frightened, confused and put off.  They wonder what’s wrong with us to get so carried away.

The journey of faith is not an all or nothing goal-line stand.  It is a lifetime walk with various companions on the way until, like the disciples on the road to Emmanus, we discover that the Lord has been with us all along.  The Eucharist is not fast food that we grab when we have little time to eat.  It is the supper of the Lord prepared carefully over time by many members of the family of faith gathering to pray.  The richest traditions of our faith grew through the centuries, changed with the times, and were instruments of renewal by the way they called people back to the basics of our belief and their lives.  They didn’t expect instant results but lasting ones, effects that soaked into the heart and marked one’s character ever after.

So witness your faith to others clearly but carefully.  Take the time to allow them to ask questions, reflect on what they hear, and grow into their loyalty and enthusiasm.  True fans don’t happen overnight.  They develop from family and friends sharing many experiences of the team, until one day they realize they are connected.  These kinds of believers stay with God’s team in good seasons and bad ones, and their enthusiasm always comes back when it’s needed to push on and move ahead. Their cheers may not always be loud and boisterous, but they are there when encouragement or celebration are called for.  Not “Yeah!” “Goooo!” or “Boooo!” but “Alleluia!” and “Amen.”

 O.K., Baxter, I’ll calm down.

Another Baxter Quirk

Bathroom habits aren’t usually talked about in polite and public company, but Baxter has a most unusual practice when it comes to his personal hygiene.  First, however, I do have to commend him for his flawless record with the litter box.  But that said, he does have a very peculiar habit as part of his bathroom routine.  Baxter has the typical cat characteristics.  He is finicky about his toilet.  It has to be kept clean.  He does the usual pawing and digging to find the right spot.  But the quirk comes into play after he has taken care of his needs.  He jumps out of the litter box, and he runs at full speed into another room.  There he begins to meow in an extended cadence, more like a common dog’s howl than a sophisticated cat’s cry.  After a few seconds it’s all over, and he is back to his usual daily activities—eating, sleeping and looking out the window.

This funny escape from his own mess almost seems like Baxter’s way of disowning it.  When he takes up his call in another room away from the litter box, it is as if to say, “Who did that?  That’s not mine.  Someone else must have left behind that mess to clean.”  He runs away, pretending that no one will know who did it and forgetting it ever happened.

While our bathroom habits aren’t the same as a cat’s, our ways of dealing with the messes we create in the course of our lives may closely resemble Baxter’s bathroom quirk.  Instead of doing what is needed to leave a clean slate, we run away from the messes and pretend that they didn’t happen or that someone else is to blame for them.  These can be a range of problems.  Maybe we have squandered our money, and now we can’t meet our monthly bills.  Maybe we have neglected our spouse or children for other interests—work, recreational activities, volunteer commitments, etc.  Maybe we find ourselves caught in an addition to alcohol, drugs, gambling, sexual fantasies or sexual encounters.  Whatever is the mess we might be in, we need to face it, figure out its causes, and do something to remove it from our lives.  It won’t go away on its own or by waiting for someone else to solve it.  We will just keep making more messes until we take charge of them ourselves.

Jesus never let people off the hook.  He forgave them much and often, but He never told them not to worry about the consequences and effects of their sin.  He held them responsible for changing the circumstances that led them into their mess.  “Sin no more,” He tells the woman caught in adultery after the crowd departs.  “Give her something to eat,” He instructs the parents of the little girl he raises to life.  “Unseal the tomb,” He directs Martha and Mary so that their brother can walk free of death.  “Show yourselves to the priests,” He orders the cured leper.  In all these circumstances, Jesus asks people to cooperate with the power of God’s grace by taking responsibility for what they can do to improve their lives.  Miracles aren’t magic.  They are disclosures of how God is at work to save us, but we have to do our part to make the effects of grace sincere and lasting.

Baxter is a cat, so he’s off the hook for his quirky habit of running away from his own mess.  We are children of God, so there is no excuse for us to help ourselves to better our lives.  God will be there.  He promised.  Are we willing to take responsibility to work with Him when we see a mess that needs cleaned?

Curious Cats

Cats are curious, and Baxter is no exception.  He loves to explore anything that isn’t part of the normal routine of his world. If the furniture is rearranged, he has to walk all around it and know where every piece is placed. If there is a new sound in the air, he runs to find its source and decide whether or not it is friendly. If strangers come into his space, he comes out to see what they look like; he rubs against them to mark them for himself; then he hopes to con them into feeding him to win a friend forever in Baxter. Baxter wants to know who and what is in his world, and what is going on beyond the ordinary routines of his cat life. Nothing escapes his notice and his sniff test to determine if it is friend or foe, food or just fuzz balls.

Curiosity is Baxter’s way of making sure that nothing escapes his notice or his control. He wants his world to be within the boundaries that he has set with the objects and people he has placed there.  That way he can try to eliminate any surprises that may disturb and disrupt his life. Keep a hold on everything, and nothing will escape and threaten your comfortable existence.

We are curious creatures also. We want to know what is going on, how it works, who is involved, what is behind the obvious facts. On the one hand, this drive to know more is a good thing. It spurs new developments in human knowledge and the life style we develop from these. If no one ever wondered how human cells work, many devastating diseases would still be menacing our lives. If no one ever thought about micro waves and storing information on silicon chips, the world of the internet and cell phones and all that comes with them would never have been possible. If we don’t ponder the great mysteries of life—from where did it all come, why do we suffer, what happens after death—the meaning of our lives will remain shallow and devoid of the weightier questions that lead us to the mystery of God and our own lives. Curiosity is the engine that drives our minds and hearts to grow in comprehending the fullness of life.

On the other hand, however, we can misuse our inquisitiveness. We snoop into places we don’t belong with little regard for what we are doing. When science is not directed by appropriate respect for the objects of its study, we can do things that are unethical and justify them in the name of free inquiry. Some stem cell research, death dealing comfort drugs, mineral extraction technology, and even cyberspace data collection reflect this distortion of our human desire to know. Closer to home, our curiosity sometimes leads us into areas of other people’s lives where we have no right to go. We try to get private information that we share with others for no other purpose than to tear down another’s character and reputation. We justify our twisted inquiries by neutral terms like “idle gossip” or “small town news”, but they are really calumny and slander. This kind of dark knowledge makes us feel important in our own eyes and sometimes in the eyes of those who listen to it. Like Baxter’s drive to know everything that’s going on in his world, it’s a way to control and manipulate others’ lives. We use information like a weapon that threatens and confines people for our purposes.

An old saying reads, “Curiosity killed the cat.” The misuse of our God-given and wonderful desire to know our world and each other in it will kill our souls and warp our understanding with sinister and selfish motives behind it. So explore, wonder, ask questions, investigate but do so for the good of others and our world. Any other reason is not worthy of you, others or the God who planted the seed of our curiosity when He made us.

A Balancing Act

Despite his portly bearing, Baxter is quite the acrobat.  He can still negotiate window sills and shelves with ease. He can walk the rim of his litter box with alacrity. He likes to sit on the edge of the bathtub, and he will even hold a pose on the back of a dining room chair for a few moments--if he thinks I’m not looking at his trespass onto forbidden territory. Cats have an amazing sense of balance. Between their agility and ability to adjust their body weight quickly, they are able to get to where they want to be no matter the obstacles or the limited access.

Although we may not be as versatile as cats, we too have a remarkable ability to balance our body weight against gravity. Once we get the hang of standing and walking on two legs, there is no stopping us. Did you ever watch a two year old set loose on his or her own? It’s usually nonstop motion into everything. Steps, cabinets, decks and balconies, they all are fair game for the young one who has discovered his or her knack for balancing his or her body on two feet. Once we have learned how, we take our sense of balance for granted. We just get up and go, not thinking twice about what it takes to stay upright.

But then something happens. We injure our back. We develop vertigo. We lose the strength in our legs.  We can no longer stand upright without holding onto something, and we can only move forward slowly and cautiously. We’re afraid of falling now, and so we begin to move less, go to fewer places, stay put to stay safe. Losing our sense of balance has many consequences for our way of life.

The same holds for our spiritual lives as well. We need to have balance to keep moving and feeling secure, and sometimes we lose this balance and don’t notice it.  Life gets busy, and soon we are consumed with work or activities.  An elderly parent or spouse becomes ill, and all the focus is on caring for them.  A divorce happens or an addiction is uncovered, and now everything falls out of whack.  At times like these, we can get trapped into limping through our days not thinking about how we are doing and what we need to change to make things better.  We are hurting so much that we can’t think straight.  Our feelings go numb, but our nerves are on edge.  We sense the pressure building in our souls, but we don’t know what to do about it.

Balance is a key to the holy life. Time for prayer, work, enrichment, recreation; time to develop the mind and get in touch with the heart; time for physical and spiritual exercise; time to eat well, sleep well; time to be alone and time to enjoy others’ company; time for serious pursuits and conversations, and time for fun and frivolous banter. Like the Book of Ecclesiastes teaches, “There is an appointed time for everything . . . under the heavens.” If we fail to walk through all these times of our lives, we grow narrow, lethargic and rigid. We don’t allow life to keep us limber so that we can move through our time on earth gracefully rather than grudgingly. We need to ask ourselves:  what’s missing from my life to keep it in balance? There is where God is calling you to respond.

Cats walk upright on the narrowest ledges because they have a wonderful sense of balance.  We can learn from them.  We can walk in faith through the toughest of times, if we keep our sense of balance by using all that God gives us.

Cat Eyes

Baxter sometimes has a very strange look. He stares either into empty space or at me seeming to see something that isn’t there. This “cat look” has often been off-putting to many people, and some have accused the species of sinister motives because of this mysterious stare.  Is it a curse they are imposing?  Is it black magic their stare conveys to unsuspecting victims? What does Baxter see when he enters into this Buddhist–like trance with his eyes wide open? The unusual look in his cat eyes raises my curiosity and suspicions.

I suppose that we will never know what is behind “the look” that cats give.  However, this feline fancy raises a second thought for our ordinary human vision. How do we look on life?  The “cat look” reminds us that there may be more to see than we usually take in. We see the problems we must solve—a leaking roof, peeling paint, potholes, torn clothing, a burnt meal, etc. We see the annoying things we do to each other—he grinds his teeth, she fingers her hair, etc. We see the threats in our world—drug deals on our streets, abused children, random violence in our neighborhoods and world terrorism. We see the dilemmas we face—empty checking accounts, home foreclosures, unemployment, rising gas prices. All of these empty our eyes of their spark and vitality. Our vision becomes clouded by the heaviness of life’s burdens, and we don’t notice anything bright when our souls grow cold in a spiritual winter.

The Jesuit priest, Gerard Manley Hopkins, wrote: “There is the dearest freshness deep down things”! If we are to refresh our souls, we need to look deeply at life. We need to get beyond the problems, annoyances and threats to the mystery that supersedes them all. This mystery ties together the particular moments, whether good or bad, by rooting them in eternity where the good points to still greater blessings, and the bad is redeemed in forgiveness and healing. This mystery probes our hearts to seize their desire to love and be loved by the satisfaction of an unconditional love that cannot end. This mystery expresses itself in sacramental signs where everything is more than it appears to be when God claims it as the vehicle of His grace. This mystery is our life blood, our life breath, our bread of life, the reason we live. The God revealed in Jesus and living with us in the Spirit is the mystery we encounter when we live deeply enough. So work on developing “the look”, not of cat’s eyes but of God’s eye envisioning a world where the divine mystery sparkles in every encounter.

Bringing Baxter Home

I lost Baxter once. He was less than a year old, and I was living in a house that had a small deck off the back door of the second floor. Baxter loved to be out there on a sunny day, and this was early September, a perfect Sunday afternoon, warm, bright and with just a hint of Fall on the leaves’ edges.  I had been out with Baxter for a couple of hours on that deck, and now I wanted to come inside to watch the evening news on TV. Baxter didn’t want to come. Every time I went to grab him, he ran away.  Frustrated, I decided to leave him on the deck while I went downstairs to the television. I never thought anything would go wrong, but it did.

 I was watching the news less than five minutes when I heard this commotion upstairs. I ran up the steps just in time to see Baxter’s hind quarters disappear off the deck with a jump to the lawn, two stories below. Another full grown cat came onto the deck as soon as I left it, and Baxter knew he was outsized so he took the only exit available. I didn’t see where he went, but since there wasn’t a bundle of fur on the lawn below, I knew he survived the jump.

 I was panicked, and my mind was racing with worry. Where did he go and what happened to him? I decided to walk around the neighborhood to look for him. I went up and down the whole dead-end street calling his name. There wasn’t a clue to his whereabouts. Since there was an open, undeveloped area behind the houses on this street, I figured he could be long gone, and I feared for his safety. You see, Baxter never had to face the big, bad world. He came to me at four months and never had to develop street smarts to make it out there. I was at a loss what to do. I felt heartsick.

Then I remembered the routines Baxter learned. When I would come home, he would be at the door waiting for me because he heard the garage door opening. The sound of the garage door opening meant I was coming home, and my coming home meant Baxter would be fed. The other association he learned was the sound of the lid being removed from the catnip container. As soon as he heard the squeak, he would come running for a nip of pleasure from the contents. This gave me an idea.

 I went into the garage and opened the door. Then I stood outside on the driveway and opened the catnip jar. It worked. Baxter was hiding in the next door neighbor’s bushes, and he came running out of there and over to me in a split second.  It was a wonderful reunion for both of us. He was home again, safe and secure, and none the worse for wear after this frightening ordeal.

When we are afraid and hiding from God, we need to listen for familiar sounds that call us home.  Maybe it’s the prayers we learned as children. Maybe it’s the sound of church bells or a familiar hymn.  Maybe it’s the memory of something your parents or grandparents said about God and God’s ways.  Maybe it’s your children’s questions about church. Whatever it is that provokes our memory about Who God is and His presence to us is a call to come home. “Big Cats” in this world may have driven us away, but since God is everywhere, we are never far from His comforting welcome—if we listen and are ready to respond.

Baxter's Bad Moment

Baxter is generally a very mild mannered “gentlecat”. But once, he had a bad moment that showed another side of him.

I was in a hurry one evening to get back to the office for a meeting. I went home to grab a quick bite of left-over chicken for dinner, and in cleaning up afterwards, I put the chicken bones, skin and uneaten parts into a small garbage bag to throw into the outside garbage container. Getting ready to leave the house, I put this bag on a table near the door until I put on my coat and hat. Then the phone rang, and after I hung up, I was so distracted that I left the house with used chicken parts sitting in a plastic bag on the table near the door. It was too much temptation for Baxter.

When I returned a couple of hours later, I couldn’t find Baxter. I found a few chicken bones but no cat. I called his name, looked in all his usual hiding spots, and shook his treat container, but still no cat appeared.

Then I heard him. He was in the spare back room crying and hissing. When I got to the door, he was beside himself. He had found what was left of the chicken and tore open the bag to get at it. Somehow, he got the bag wrapped around his belly and it wouldn’t release. He hissed and howled and cried and glared at me. Whenever I would try to approach him, he became even more belligerent. He had worked himself into a frenzy over this bag that held him prisoner, and there was no soothing him. He was in a ridiculous predicament of his own making, and he wasn’t about to let anyone help or calm him.

I didn’t know what to do, so I just closed the door to the room where Baxter was. I decided to call the emergency vet for some help. That went nowhere as they offered me no advice except to bring him into the clinic. But that was my problem. He wouldn’t let me approach him, so how was I going to take him anywhere without becoming a scratched and bloody victim of his rage. Baxter ate the chicken, and I became chicken.

I decided that maybe “time out” was in order. I would just stay in the living room and watch television for a while. Give him time to settle down in the spare room. I quit calling him. I opened the door a crack, and I pretended he wasn’t around. I allowed him to settle down. It worked.

After about a half hour, Baxter came slowly out of the room with the plastic bag still wrapped around his belly. He sheepishly walked up to me and rolled on his back. I petted him gently for a few minutes. Then I got a pair of scissors and cut the bag away from his body. Shortly afterwards, he stood up, went to his water dish and drank a healthy portion. Aside from the chicken bones strewn around the house and a few towels and other clothes scattered about in his desperation to get free of the bag, nothing was the worst for wear. But we both learned a few things.

Baxter learned to stay away from what he couldn’t handle, even if the temptation seemed so good and enticing. He learned to stop fretting and fuming if he wanted to get over the incident. He learned to gear down and be quiet if he wanted to return to his old, affable self. He learned that “time out” isn’t just for kittens, but adult cats need to stop, take a deep breath, and let go of their anger, if life is to get back to normal again.

I learned that I can’t fix things as quickly and easily as I thought I could. I learned to allow Baxter his space to work out his feelings before he faced me again. I learned to speak softly when he is hissing and crying loudly. I learned to go slowly when he did return—pet him gently and calmly—then when he was ready, to cut loose the bag holding him bound. I learned to let him take care of himself once he was free, and to let him decide when he could come close again and sit on my lap. I learned to respect Baxter’s desires and disposition, and not force him to meet my desires and disposition all the time. I learned how not to own Baxter but to care for him.

A cat, chicken bones and an absent-minded cat lover--God uses the strangest things at times to teach us His ways and wisdom.

Baxter is Back

Summer is over, and the world is gearing up for the long haul until next June.  But before we forget about the months just passed, we need to take stock of their hidden lessons for us.  Baxter shows us how.

Baxter loves the summer.  He sits on the ledge of open windows.  Open windows offer so much more than closed and locked ones.  He smells the fresh air, hears the birds chirping, the dogs barking and the humans chattering.  He feels like the outside comes indoors when the breeze streams through the room and the sun shines brightly on the walls.  In the winter, Baxter protects himself from the elements of nature, but in the summer, he invites them into his living space to refresh and brighten it.  Baxter soaks in the summer, and I think its memory keeps him going through the cold, dark days of winter when he is confined to the artificially heated room behind closed and locked windows and doors.

Taking our cue from Baxter, the lessons of summer are many.  Lesson one:  living creatures thrive in light and air.  These elements lift our spirits; they make us look healthy; they even nourish us with Vitamin D and oxygen.  Lesson two:  hard work in cooperation with the natural environment yields a harvest that nourishes life.  August and early September are such bountiful months for fresh fruits and vegetables, and there is no substitute for the taste of locally grown foodstuffs.  Lesson three:  simple things make summer so rich.  An exotic vacation or an expensive purchase isn’t the usual hallmark of a great summer.  It’s the annual picnic or the still of a summer evening or the sound of a lawn mower or the visit to the soft-serve stand that distinguishes this season.  Simple things carry a weight of meaning that we learn through the years to appreciate.

For us as Christians, these lessons hold a spiritual message as well.  The fullness of human thriving comes in the light of Christ and the breath of His Spirit.  We seek this light deep in our hearts, and no artificial substitutes will satisfy us.  We need more than oxygen to sustain us.  We need the breath of God to keep us from smothering in the stale air of our own self-centeredness.  The fruits that will last are those generated by our efforts and God’s grace cooperating to make a better world for all peoples.  Grace tempers the tyranny of our human efforts to “do it my way”, yet our hard work makes concrete and tangible God’s hidden life and power in our midst.  Finally, God is simple, not in a simplistic or naïve sense, but in the sense of being true and self-evident.  Like the simple things that make up summer memories, there is no hidden agenda or dressed-up appearances with God.  He loves us without conditions, and this simple fact exposes our own truth and goodness that we often try to ignore or deny.

For Baxter and for all of us, summer is quickly passing, but its lessons can carry us through the colder seasons ahead.  Preserve a little of the nourishment grown in the summer, and take it from the shelf when you need it in a January time of life.  Hold on to the lessons of summer until it is warm and sunny again.  They keep all of us healthy and holy. 

The Last Meow for Now: God's Space For Us

Cats get a reputation for being aloof and uncaring. They are certainly independent creatures. They have their own routines and likes and dislikes, and they want them followed. They each have their own personalities, and others risk a hiss, scratch or bite if they choose to ignore the disposition of the resident cat. They claim their surroundings as their territory, and everyone who comes into it is a guest. Guests are welcome if they follow the rules like don’t rearrange things, don’t sit in my chair, don’t move the food or the litter box. Baxter is no exception to these feline foibles. He claims his space and those in it for his own, and he wants others to recognize and respect his rights for his stake in the world.

That’s all that God is asking as well. “Give me my rightful place in your life and our world.” It’s a message many want to write off. “Find your own space. Get out of my face. Your agenda is one among many. Take your turn when yours comes up. (Christmas and Easter?)” We want God to compete with us for a share in our lives and world. He is welcome to enter into the arena with all the other interests and rights that claim our attention, but there are no privileges of place or person here. Each party takes what he can claim before someone else gets it. It’s a dog eat dog battle for space, attention and importance, and God is just one of the many competitors for a place in our lives.

But God won’t play this game with us. Like cats, God assumes His claim over us. After all, He is the Creator of the world, and we are His children, made in His image, not independent agents on an equal par with the Creator. Of course, God respects our freedom and intelligence, so He won’t force His will on us. However, He also can’t allow us to play god with Him and each other without bearing the consequences for such arrogance and disrespect. God doesn’t hiss, scratch or bite. Rather, He allows us to do those kind of things to each other as a result of our silly competition to dominate others with our ways, our ownership and our egos. When we compete for the limelight, all we see in each other are the blemishes we have—our sins.

God’s claim like a cat’s is total and absolute. “This is my world. I set the boundaries for living in it, and I will not compromise them for your particular whim. But unlike cats, I won’t get my way with physical or manipulative force. I will use a stronger power which often takes longer to be felt. I will love you into doing it my way. When your ways have failed, when your battles to be number one are surrendered, when you can’t take the crazy pace, the isolation of being on top, the unease of seeing others only as competitors, and the senselessness of measuring the meaning of life by the number of wins and losses, then I will be there to forgive you and show you how to start over again.”

Cats seem aloof because they won’t play with us on our terms. They set the standards for feline happiness. God often might appear distant and even irrelevant for the same reason. But divine happiness is shared happiness with all creation, and so God’s standards are finally for our own good. Quit playing games, and give God His space this summer.

Baxter’s Personal Message for All His Readers

I can’t stand the heat, so I am taking a break for the summer from my life and faith lessons. Don’t worry though. I will be back in time for football season with purrs, meows and maybe a few hisses -- if Notre Dame doesn’t turn it around this year. Until then, think about what God teaches us through His many creatures, give thanks for the blessings in your life, and enjoy the summer! I won’t forget you. Don’t forget me and my housemate, Monsignor Statnick. Until kickoff, let us continue to pray for each other.

Easter Meows: Sunbathing

He seems to think it is the Riviera, but it’s only the bedroom rug. Still Baxter loves the feel of it on these sunny days when the light comes streaming into the windows. He lies in the direct rays, fully stretched out, and basks in the warmth. He won’t move, so that he can soak it all in. I have warned him of the dangers of overexposure to the sun’s rays, but he can’t resist the light and warmth. I haven’t noticed a tan, or worse, a burn. I wonder if that happens to cats. Baxter just closes his eyes and seems to get lost in the tranquility of a perfect weather day. It’s like he IS on vacation at an exotic resort without a care in mind.

We have been told to avoid overexposure to the sun. Its UV rays cause skin cancer at worst, and premature aging at best. Still many people can’t resist the allure of the sun. They love the feel of its warmth on their skin and the look of a “healthy” tan. So many are attracted to the sunlight that even when there is none to be had, they buy an artificial version in tanning salons. Like Baxter, it doesn’t have to be perfect circumstances to enjoy the effects. A glass and metal container with tube lights all around a person when they lie down does the trick for many to feel better about their looks.

Too bad that we don’t have the same sense about the light of the Risen Lord and its warmth for our lives. It may not darken our skin tone, but it can change the tone of our attitudes towards others and our world. Christ’s light shows us that despite the factors that circumstances bring to bear, there is a difference between good and evil, between holiness and hypocrisy, between true service and self-aggrandizement or control of others in the name of charity. This light penetrates beyond the surface of ourselves and others to allow us to see our souls and the common desire we share for God’s forgiveness, healing and love. The warmth of this light is the love of God, and in this love, we can dare to look at ourselves and others differently. We don’t have to be afraid that we won’t be good enough in this light. No worries need arise about being too fat or thin, too pale or blemished when we bathe in the Son’s light. On this beach, only our true selves can soak in the rays of divine love. Everything else blocks the Son’s effects.

And these effects are truly beautiful. We become people with purpose, for we see ourselves as carrying on the very work of God in our world. So we take responsibility for making a better world through our job, families and citizenship. We wear our faith clearly for others to see, yet we assume it humbly, for we know it is a gift. It becomes like a tan, a part of our skin, which we can’t take on and off at our convenience or depending upon the circumstance. We live in the light of Christ 24/7, and this light enters into every place with every person with whom we live our lives. We stretch ourselves to take in as much of it as we can, yet we relax, trusting that it will be there for us when needed. God’s beach is the world and His sunbathers are everyone who seeks Him with a sincere heart. We share the beach with others when we respect their soulful search for the everlasting light. Then we can be God’s witnesses by naming the light, Christ, and the warmth, God’s love. Finally, we step back, and let the Light show the other person the way and the truth and the life for him or her.

Baxter loves the sunshine and seeks it when it shines. The Sonshine loves us and seeks out our souls all the time. Take the time and effort to allow the light of Christ to shine on us and through us. We will all look better for the exposure.

Easter Meows: Common Characteristics

From time to time people have told me that my description of one of Baxter’s quirks fits their cat to a tee. While I want to stand up for Baxter’s special character — after all, he is the best cat in all the world—I have to admit that he is part of a common species and shares much in common with his fellow feline friends. That doesn’t make him less loved and cherished. There will only be one Baxter for me, and he will always be remembered as special and unique. We have been through a lot together — five moves, the death of my parents, three different church positions, and a few illnesses, for starters. A shared history creates bonds that last long, even across species. Yet, with my fellow pet owners, I share common stories of why we love our animals. The particulars are unique, but together we and our pets have lived through a gamut of experiences—losses, challenges, worries and frustrations along with joys, adventures, celebrations and growth in recognizing what is truly valuable. Our pets have been our companions through these times. As such, they signal that there is meaning and purpose to our stories, and make the travel through time less burdensome, and even fun.

The Church is made up of companions in faith on the road to God’s Kingdom. While we each bring our particular personalities, customs and histories to this community, we come together because we share a common baptism in Christ. Our baptism identifies us as disciples called to a lifestyle and vision formed by our Catholic Christian faith. Too often we lose this shared sense of ourselves in the individualism of our American culture. We each want to stand out. We each want to claim ownership for what distinguishes our heritage in the faith. We think of ourselves as different because we think that makes us special and unique. We miss the point.

What makes us special and unique is what we share by entering together into the mystery of God’s life in baptism. When we are baptized we are each claimed as God’s own, never to be duplicated or dismissed. We are baptized into Christ’s death and resurrection so that nothing can ever separate us from the love of God, neither our sin nor the power of evil in our world. It is this love which makes us unique, for it called us into life, sustains us through life’s trials and threats, and promises us eternal life in the end. Yet, the truth of this divine love is that it does not belong to me alone. God is manifest in the many different faces of the faithful, in their histories, customs and cultures. He sounds and looks differently according to our languages and heritages, but He is one God, the Father of our one Lord, Jesus Christ, known in the one Spirit we share. Our baptism seals this oneness of God among ourselves, and is the source of our bond with each other that reaches beyond the differences.

We are like a tapestry. Each thread brings color and texture to the piece, but we only see who we are when we are part of the whole picture created by all the threads. Like cats, we are much alike, yet each makes a particular difference in their pet owner’s life. We are all God’s children and Christ’s disciples in baptism, but each of us is loved differently by God according to what we need, so that we can know we are His own with a special mission to fulfill. Celebrate both dimensions of our faith. Let us each find our true selves in God, and see ourselves together sharing divine life as children of one Father. What is most common among us is what makes us most special to each other and to God.

Easter Meows: Hiding in Place

Sometimes Baxter hides. He hides when he is afraid, like when the vacuum cleaner starts. But he also hides just to play a game sometimes. I come home or get out of my chair after reading for a spell, and he is nowhere to be found. I check all of his favorite spots — his bed, my bed, choice chairs, the rug near the heating vent, the rug near the sunny window, the bathtub—but no trace of him. He vanishes in plain sight. He doesn’t go away. He just blends into the surroundings in silence. He might be near a leg under the dining room table. He might sit quietly by the door to the garage, and most elusive of all, he might go into the front office which I never use except to store some records. He just sits there on the floor, wondering how long it will take me to figure out where he is. If Baxter feels sorry for me during this search for the obvious, he sometimes will answer when I call his name, but only after some time has passed. After all, he has to win this game by proudly prancing across my path as if to say, “I was there all the time. What’s wrong with you?” This is his version of hide and seek, but we never take turns at different sides in the game. He is always hiding, and I am always seeking. He eventually wins, and I have a good chuckle.

God plays hide and seek sometimes. Like Baxter, He can disappear by quietly blending into the familiar surroundings. Because they are familiar, we think we know what’s there, so we often don’t take a second look. But hidden in the common places of our lives, there’s a quiet presence, blending into the surroundings but adding an uncommon dimension to them. We need to search for this silent divine partner with the tools at our disposal.

One of those tools is attention. We need to give God our attention. We live with so many distractions that we sometimes don’t realize how we have lost our focus. We just go from one thing to another, checking off our “to do” list, and feeling exhausted in the end, wondering what we accomplished. God hides at times to get us to focus on Him. When we seek the Lord earnestly, our other responsibilities fall into place in their proper priority. We take on one thing at a time and make progress step by step, instead of scattering our energies and getting nowhere. Making God the center of our lives puts everything else in its proper place for our attention and energy.

Another tool is our imagination, so that we can focus our attention differently. If we keep looking in the same way in the same places, we may come up empty. The hidden God calls us in a new direction. God is where we least expect Him at times—in routine transactions with others, in the drudgery of daily or weekly chores, at the dinner table on a work day, or cleaning up afterwards with the family. We miss Him because we get lost in getting the job done. We forget to look at all that is happening as we go about the tasks of living. For instance, at the checkout counter, do we notice the people and what they do to serve us? Sure it’s their job, but it’s also a meeting place where God shows us how to create a more civil and humane community. The same holds true for driving, raising legitimate complaints, and helping others. It’s all in the way we do these things, and not just in getting them done. God is hidden in our patience, our courtesy, our ability to listen and even disagree without rancor. His presence can surprise us when we enjoy what we do because we do it together with a purpose bigger than any single person’s desires. When we work for God’s Kingdom rather than our own, everyone prospers with a happier way of life.

So look around and try some new approaches in how we go about our daily life chores. God is playing hide and seek with us, and we may not realize it. Look for His holy presence in what we have to do, and we may be surprised at where and how He turns up. While God always wins, we can enjoy the diving comedy and our role in it.

Easter Meows: Catnip Magic

Catnip does strange things to cats. Baxter craves it at times. He rubs his head over it. He eats it. He lies on it. If it is in a toy, he bats it around, grabs it, and then bites it. Catnip will settle his stomach if it is a little off. It will calm him if he is agitated. It stimulates his energy to go a little crazy. It is a universal elixir for Baxter, balancing out whatever seems to be throwing him off his well-rounded life of eating, sleeping, purring, meowing and starting all that over again.

Catnip is a natural herb. It doesn’t have to be mixed or synthesized, refrigerated or cooked, and it can be used through multiple delivery systems—eaten, smelled, packaged or loose. It comes dried or fresh growing. It is very versatile yet quite effective. It seems to cure what ails the cat, at least for a while, and according to Baxter, it is worth a try to improve anything from arthritis to the ordinary blues. Catnip is the universal cat medicine, the aspirin of the cat world. It takes away the pain and gives a little relief from the wear and tear of daily living. It stimulates both euphoria and peace according to the needs of the nipper. It’s a gift to the cat world.

The Holy Spirit is God’s gift to our world. It was released through Christ’s death and resurrection, and once set loose, it cannot be contained until the whole world is saved. Like catnip for cats, the Spirit provides what is needed to cope with the vicissitudes of life faithfully. You see, life is so unpredictable and varied that one size can’t fit all. To grow in faith we have to respond to whatever life brings to bear upon us. Sometimes that calls for steadying ourselves to remain constant in our practices and understanding. At other times, the Spirit provides us the courage and strength to meet a new challenge, to reach out in faith in a new way, still uncharted and untested. The early Church in the Acts of the Apostles knew both of these effects of the Spirit. It stood up to the challenges of some of the synagogue officials trying to stop this new preaching about Jesus as the fulfillment of the prophets. It supported Saint Paul in his mission to the Gentiles, and brought Saint Peter around to seeing this work as an extension of God’s ways in the post-Easter world. The Holy Spirit is the gyrocompass we use to navigate the balance beam on which we are asked to walk in our path through life. It gives our spirit energy and strength, a source of healing and forgiveness, and an attitude that keeps us upright on the beam while we move forward.

As we approach the close of the Easter season, let us open the door to the Holy Spirit in our lives. Through the Spirit we live the mystery of death and resurrection each day. Through this Spirit our hearts take on the attitude of God towards others, and our actions become the work of God through us. Through this Spirit we share a communion of life with each other that is greater and deeper than family or friendship.

So don’t forget the Spirit. It’s God’s natural elixir for us to live holy lives. Although Baxter might not think so, it is better than catnip for a balanced life of discipleship. Pray for the Spirit in the Church. “Come, Holy Spirit, fills the hearts of Thy Faithful, and kindle in them the fire of Your Love.”

Easter Meows: Grooming

Cats groom themselves, and Baxter is no exception. Grooming has a number of purposes in the feline world. It keeps things like coat, paws and nose clean. It fills in time when there are no interest prey to watch. It soothes the cat when something upsets it. A few hardly licks of the back or shoulder, and whatever was causing anxiety and frustration seems to disappear. In fact, one of the ways you know that you have an emotionally troubled cat is if he or she grooms him or herself incessantly. Too much of a good thing turns bad when neurotic compulsiveness causes sin irritation. There is another down side to grooming -- hairballs! All that loose fur that the grooming relieves from the outside can gum up the insides. The hacking and full body peristalsis that can result are anything but pleasant for both pet and owner.

To groom the hard-to-reach places, cats have this remarkable ability to contort their bodies. They can twist in almost 180 degrees or fold themselves in half to get every inch of their torsos for a comforting lick or two. they won't stop stretching and bending until they get to the exact spot that needs attention. Comfort is worth the indignity of a compromised position. Grooming is all about the cat making him or herself feel comfortable, safe and secure. Baxter always feels better about himself after a few well-placed licks.

We have our own way of making ourselves feel comfortable and secure. Instead of licking our physical surface, we lick the internal side of ourselves, our spirits. When we are hurt by life's unfairness and rejection, we sometimes keep the wounds clean and fresh by wallowing in self-pity. When we are insecure and nervous, we do what it takes to feel at ease again -- eat too much, smoke, indulge our sexual fantasies, or overwork. When depressed or despairing about our significance or importance, we do something to convince ourselves that we matter and make a difference. Maybe we shop. Maybe we drink too much alcohol. Maybe we gossip about others' flaws and failures. Whatever it is, we build ourselves up by reaching for something that we think adds to our stature or dulls the pain of feeling small. We soothe our wounded spirit with something that licks our ego and brings a comfortable feeling for a while. But it doesn't last.

Our self-generated comforts all wear off in time, and we are left with the same wounded, anxious, depressed person in the mirror. We can't heal ourselves permanently. The wounds, anxiety and despair are too deep, rooted in original sin and the power of evil that is beyond our abilities to control. Only a power greater than ourselves and our devices can heal our souls, quiet our self-doubts, and lift our spirits. This is the power of the Risen Lord that promises peace beyond the grave, instills confidence through faith, and brings hope based upon a love that death could not contain. The resurrection grooms us for a new kind of life, one that finds comfort not in what we can do for ourselves, but in what God can do for us through sharing our talents with each other in the Lord's name. That is what God's love looks like when it grooms us into something beautiful. We discovered a communion of life that uses the circumstances we are in to reveal a deeper dimension, the mystery of grace saving us and ennobling us in the process.

Baxter needs a lick of his tongue to keep him calm and balanced. We need a lick of grace to find peace and our true worth. Let us help each other find the beauty secret we are looking for and the comfort it brings by sharing God's grace in our service to and with each other. We will all feel better that way -- less anxious, more secure, healed and at peace -- without the problem of hairballs.

Easter Meows: Free of Fear

Baxter is a scaredy cat. He hides under the bed when the vacuum cleaner turns on. He is easily startled by any loud noise. When I hold him in my arms and take him out-side on a sunny day, he gets easily spooked and tries to hide his head in the crook of my arm for safety. Anything unusual, unfamiliar or unexpected can raise a fright for him who likes to pose as my ferocious feline. Although he is bulky like a lion and likes to make threatening hisses when it’s safe to do so, under all this bravado, Baxter truly is a pussy cat—the cowardly lion wishing he were more but, when the test comes, failing to find it.

He is so much like us, isn’t he? We pose our courage in words and gestures when we know we can escape if a real test comes. We think of ourselves as strong and resolute in our beliefs and values, until they come into conflict with our self-interest and comfort-able life style. We use back room tactics to criticize others, but back off from directly facing them with our concerns and the reason for them. We take the course of least resis-tance to avoid hassles. It sometimes becomes ―live and let live‖ not out of respect for others, but out of convenience for ourselves. The price of peace becomes our passivity and apathy. We walk away from the problem or difficulty, hoping it won’t be there when we re-turn. We are afraid of what might happen if we deal with each other honestly, directly, and freely. If they won’t do what I say or do or want, where do we go from there? Is the only alternative to give in or force our way?

The Risen Lord speaks a few key messages to His first disciples. The first is "Fear not," and the reason He gives for relinquishing fear is "It is I." A relationship with the Lord Jesus overcomes fear. We are not left on our own to figure out the unknown and the dilemmas it creates. We have the wisdom, the care, and the strength that come from faith, and the support and shared insight that come from the community of disciples to which we belong. We are not alone, but we live bound to God through the mark of baptism and bound to all the baptized through the Spirit that was poured out on us. The Lord Jesus is the hub of the wheel, and attached to Him we are connected to all oth-ers who claim to be His disciples. What’s there to fear with such a united force?

That is why the second message of the Risen Lord is "Peace." We know we are free from fear when we speak and act with a sense of confidence and resolve that is not easily shaken or stubbornly stuck in one way -- my way! That is the case because our confidence is not solely in ourselves. We trust that the power of God is available to us who seek it and that this power is effective through us. This creates a certain detachment from our efforts. We don’t need to control every as-pect of everything in life. We don’t need to be successful all the time. We don’t need to do it only our way. We just need to serve. God’s power is a force for service, and if people are being served with the respect due fellow disciples, then we can relax about how it is done, who does it, or what the final outcome may look like. We work and live in peace.

Poor Baxter doesn’t have the benefit of baptism in the risen life of Christ. He has to make it on his instincts alone. No wonder he is so easily frightened. No need for us to be scaredy cats though. We share discipleship in a community of the baptized. We are not alone. Peace.

Easter Meows: The Leap

Baxter is a senior cat now. At eleven, he has sown his wide oats and is contented with the simple pleasures of cat life — food, sleep, sunshine and a good scratch. I do not know if Baxter has joined AARC (American Association of Retired Cats), but he definitely lives the retired life style. Still, there is one thing from his youthful prime that Baxter continues to practice with poise and aplomb. He still jumps! He still has the old stuff when it comes to leaping with grace and surprise onto a window sill, a table, the bed, even the roof of my car. He springs into place seemingly effortlessly. He glides through the air and lands where he wants, perfectly in balance. How does he do it?

I read that a cat’s skeletal structure isn’t made like ours. In layman’s terms, they are more loosely connected bone to bone so that they can “spring” from a set position and stretch to a new one without looking contorted or squashed. Their bodies have a lot of “give” to them, and that makes their movements look effortless. Even the old boy, Baxter, hasn’t lost this cat magic.

Nor has God. God is older than all of us. In fact, we gave up trying to count God’s age. It’s impossible, so we say instead that God is eternal, without beginning or end. Yet, like cats, God stays spry in His ability to leap and keep His balance in our lives. That is what He showed us in Christ’s resurrection. Death could not hold God down when Jesus was laid in the tomb. He leaped to new and transformed life, and established a new way of balancing the injustices and unfairness of life through the grace of His Holy Spirit. Love evens the scales. Love springs into action when all else seems lost. Love never grows old, and never dies. As Saint Augustine describes God, He is “Love, ever ancient, ever new.” It’s that Love that saves us through the Easter mysteries of death becoming the springboard to new life.

So don’t give up just because you’re older or feeling older through the weight of life’s burdens of sin and heartache. It is never too late to learn how to leap like a cat, when we let our graceful God land in our hearts and change our way of living. We may aim for places we didn’t think we could reach, and balance ourselves on a crossbeam there that we feared would not support us. But no one expected Jesus to rise from the dead after the cross of Calvary killed Him. Faith is a leap into the mystery of life from death, a leap into the arms of a loving God. So let’s not hold onto ourselves too tightly, or we will land hard and off balance when life moves us. Learn from the Creator of cats. We can still jump at any age, if we allow God to keep us loose and balanced through the power of the Risen Lord.

Easter Meows: The Look

You can’t stare a cat down. I have tried it with Baxter, and I never win. He usually gets me to laugh by doing something that distracts me even while he’s holding my gaze. Looking into a cat’s eyes is like looking into the abyss. What is going on behind that mysterious stare? Are myriad ideas running through his head about his owner, the weather, food, other cats, the next prank, or is the stare a blank, disguising a vacuous gray matter void of any thoughts? Cat’s eyes are a mystery. They attract us with their colors and their penetrating gaze. The dilating and shrinking of their pupils intrigues us. They appear at different times in different moods—mournful, happy, eager, bored, pensive, and caring. It’s all in the soft, feline eyes, and the eyes are the window of the soul. We are fascinated by their look because we hope to get a glimpse of what makes them tick.

Wouldn’t it be great to be able to look into God’s eyes? What would we see there? Certainly, more mystery than we could ever imagine, and more love than we could ever hope to acknowledge and embrace. But where do we find the eye of God? Easter points the way.

The empty tomb of Christ’s resurrection is the opening to God’s soul. It is the eye we look into to discover who God is for us. Like the eyes of a physical creature, it is a sign of the interior life, a clue to what may be going on inside the mind and heart of its subject. The empty tomb offers no definitive explanation of Christ’s victory over sin and death, but it draws us into this event by raising questions and calming our fears of the darkness we associate with such things. It declares that something happened here unprecedented in human history yet beyond the confines of that history. The eternal God reached into the realm of death and brought forth life that will never die again. He reached into the place where the consequences of human sin left a dead body and healed the effects of sin by raising that body to new life. And the best news of all is that this miracle is not just for the Jesus who was crucified, but through Him, it is for everyone who dies with Christ in baptism. God is the Lord of the living and the dead. God’s Lordship is generous, gracious and loving for us all. Unlike the power of the proud and arrogant, the victory of the Risen Lord is humbly shared with those who share His life. The empty tomb empties the tombs of all who believe in Christ’s power to save. Life is promised for all because one man died for the many.

This is, indeed, a mystery, more perplexing than any bizarre Baxter stare or human look at the unknown. It is the look of Love itself Who created the world and saved it from its own selfishness and limitations. It sees what we can’t see now. It promises what is beyond our ability to grasp. It is communion with God through the portal of what appears most separated and isolated from human contact with another, death. It is Resurrected Life. Nothing can explain it. Nothing can destroy it. But Christian believers throughout the world celebrate it this Easter day as the true heart of God shared with the broken hearts of humanity, making them whole. Alleluia!

Baxter and I wish all our readers a “Happy Easter!”

Lenten Scratches: Fresh Air

Baxter loved the warm days we had a few weeks ago. I would open the windows wide, and he would sit on the sill all excited about the sounds of the birds and the warmth and brightness of the sun. He perked up at any movement he spied from his self-designated observation tower. He was full of life because he surrounded himself with all sorts of living creatures. They made him curious, and he wanted to investigate every sight and sound he encountered. He jumped from window to window, taking it all in and smelling the sweet freshness of nature coming to life again.

What gets us excited about living? Do we think we are too old and settled to expect anything new and different to spark our imaginations? Are the responsibilities we hold each day weighing down our spirits and stifling our creativity? Can God get to us with a call to live life anew in His Spirit? We need to examine our lives in view of where we have positioned the windows. Are they shut all the time? Are the blinds closed to the light? Do we even look out through them to see a bigger world beyond our confines?

Lent is window washing time for us. Take the dust away from our vision, and let the fresh air inside. Now look at what God is doing in our world. Despite the wars and violence in our streets there are signs of compassion when the hungry are fed, the naked clothed and the homeless sheltered. Despite the greed and selfishness of some business and political activities, there are those who want to work together, who are generous in their dealings, and who treat their employees and customers with respect and fairness. Despite the frustrations with cold bureaucracies and insider deals, every system has people who believe that serving others is the first and most important thing we do each day. Look for these heroes in our midst. Thank them for being different, and follow their example. They are the breath of fresh air and warm light that signal the end of the world’s winter and the growth of new life.

We can so easily get discouraged these days by all that we see and hear around us, however, the reasons for hope are there too. Perhaps not where we are accustomed to look, but look again. There are open minds and hearts that seek to serve others and make a better world for us all. For us who believe, these witnesses of hope are signs of the Spirit released by the Risen Lord. As we approach Easter, breathe in that Spirit. Feel its warmth; see its hints of new life; and praise God for His presence and power in our midst. Become a witness and agent of God’s Spirit wherever you live and work, and so bring some freshness to the life you share with others.

Baxter sits on the sill of an open window to take in the freshness of new life. We sit at the entrance of an empty tomb to see things differently. Baxter’s viewpoint passes with the seasons, but ours is meant to last into eternity. Don’t miss the opportunity for some fresh air and new life this Easter.