Dear Leo,

I've started reading G. K. Chesterton's book The Man Who Was Thursday.    Have you read it?  It's riveting.  Yet, I have to admit: I'm sure I'm not catching all the references, and I'm certainly not understanding all the satire.  Even so, what I find fascinating, and I'm sure G. K. meant it to be this way, is how the paradoxes are layered upon layer.  It's as though Mr. Chesterton built a nested-Russian-dolls of ideas.  It's as though he wants us to question ourselves at every turn.  And yet, it's not for the sake of revealing there is nothing to know.  The tone of Chesterton's writing is with such solid authority that the reader doesn't even have to assume there is such a thing as Truth; s/he is simply and immediately enlisted in the quest to discern Truth.  The shock is in realizing we are not it's author!

I'm only a fourth of the way through the book at the moment, so I'll have to read more before I can comment further, except to say this:  Chesterton wrote The Man Who Was Thursday in 1908.  It was relevant in his day, and, I believe, even more so today.

More later,
Mack

Buried in God with Christ

Dear One,

My soul needs to tell you that it is wholly in communion with yours, letting itself be caught, carried away, invaded by him whose charity envelops us and who wishes to consummate us into "one" with him.  I thought of you when I read these words of Pere Vallee on contemplation: "The contemplative is a being who lives in the radiance of the Face of Christ, who enters into the mystery of God, not in the light that flows from human thought, but in that created by the word of the Incarnate Word."  Don't you have this passion to listen to him?  Sometimes it is so strong, this need to be silent, that one would like to know how to do nothing but remain like Magdalene, that beautiful model for the contemplative soul, at the feel of the Master, eager to hear everything, to penetrate ever deeper into this mystery of Charity that he came to reveal to us.

Don't you find that in action, when we are in Martha's role, the sould can still remain wholly adoring, buried like Magdalene in her contemplation, staying by this source like someone who is starving...  Then both can radiate God, give him to souls, if they constantly stay close to this divine source.  It seems to me that we should draw so close to the Master, in such communion with his soul, to identify ourselves with all its movements, and then go out as he did, according to the will of his Father.  Then it does not matter what happens to the soul, since it has faith in the One it loves who dwells within it.

During this Lent I would like, as Saint Paul says, "to be buried in God with Christ," to be lost in this Trinity who will one day be our vision, and in this divine light penetrate into the depth of the Mystery.

~Elizabeth

Blessed Elizabeth of the Trinity (+1906) was a French Carmelite nun and mystical writer.

Accepting Paradox in Others

Dear Leo,
Do you ever have that feeling of really liking someone but also finding yourself repeatedly irritated by so many of the things they do or say or how they say what they say or how they don't do what they say others should do?!?

I've had that experience recently, and it leaves me feeling disoriented.  I think, maybe, that feeling of "disorientation" is true, and I've given it the proper word, because I feel most whole and balanced and true and able to move forward when I am oriented in Christ, when my eyes are fixed on Christ, when it is Christ that I aim to please and to follow and be shaped by.  If I have allowed myself to be too focused or too influenced by another person, I have misplaced my proper orientation!

In the other experience (of liking someone in general but being greatly irritated by their particulars) I think, maybe, that the "liking" is recognizing some basic commonality; I have identified myself w/ them.  And then the irritations are when I either see in them things I don't like in myself, or I am being disabused of the generalized identification; I'm being reminded that the other is truly other, and I have to reorient myself as to who I am!  I'm not sure about all this.  I'm just wondering about it.

At any rate, I was somehow reminded of something by Rohr:

People are odd creatures: We are at the same time very good and very sinful.  These qualities do not cancel each other out.  Faith is to live and to hold onto that paradox.  Those with room for those two seemingly contradictory truths to coexist are the ones who can recognize the Kingdom of God. 

The absurdity of human reality will not shock them:  They've already faced it inside themselves.  The enemy is not out there, the enemy is us.  And when they see the paradox, they stop fighting the world.  They stop hating and avoiding the world.  They're free to live that threshold existence that we call the Kingdom. 

Then he goes on to say some important things about the Kingdom and about the nature of "threshold," but it was the reminder that we're all paradoxical creatures that's helping me abide in Christ's pure and faithful unconditional Love for each one of us, and all of us together.

Thank you, Leo, for listening.
Thank You, Abba, for Being!

~Mack

Now

Why do people act as if the future is waiting for them?  Already existent and yearning for them?  Pulling them into the torrent of "forward" progress?

To me, the future is constantly born.  My future doesn't exist until I give birth to it.

The present is full of labor pains.

One of my recently-found favorite poets, Genevieve Glen, is a favorite because of how she writes about God, life, faith, and so often in terms of what I would call everyday paradoxes.  Here's an example:

O Silence Sonorous with Word

O Silence sonorous with Word,
O Breath unseen, of Love unheard,
O unconsuming Fire, dark Light,
We worship at the edge of night.

O God beyond all speech or thought,
O God in song half-hid, half-caught,
O God for human mind too much,
In crib and cross and bread we touch.

O timeless One in majesty,
O indivisible yet Three,
O Source and Sabbath of our days,
Accept, accept our stammering praise.

~Genevieve Glen, O.S.B. (1998)

Mackled Meaning

Dear Reader,

In looking for a name for this blog, I came across the word "mackle."  Here's the definition from the online Oxford Dictionary:  "a blurred impression in printing."  "Mackled" then is an impression that has been blurred in printing. 

Although I will certainly try my best to write clearly, my "mackled letters" will express my thoughts and feelings (vague or not) about my observations of the "blurred" aspects of life.  Given that I see much of life in terms of paradox, I will sometimes use metaphors or “double entendres” to express my experience.  I might even make-up new words.  I will often let the ambiguous remain ambiguous.

I like seeing the special in the ordinary, the sacred in the secular, the divine in the human, those things which seemingly should be polar opposites, never to meet, and yet meet and do so frequently.  In fact, in my experience, they seem to be two sides of the same coin.  Maybe a better image would be to describe these opposites as inter-twining threads w/in the same tapestry.  To use a musical metaphor: they together make up the point and counter-point of the same fugue, or the four voices of a hymn, or the multi-faceted timbres and lines of a symphony.

The blur in observing these pairings is in resisting or not being able to hold the paradox of how they each inherently invoke the other.  It's not in recognizing the differences or in seeing the juxtaposition of "opposites" that I could conclude my vision is less than clear.  It is in attempting to homogenize their perspectives, or in trying to amalgamate their various functions, that I could remain blind to the deepest beauty of the fabric.  Can I hear the parts of a fugue in dialogue, and can I hear the dialogue as meaningful counterpoint, rather than only the resulting harmonies? 

But why write about these matters?  And why in the form of letters?  I’m not an authority or even a scholar of my topics.  I don’t plan to analyze the parts and explain their inter-locking functions.  This will really just be a diary of some of my observations and ponderings.  More often than not, I will probably ask questions and leave them unanswered or partially considered.  I will explore tangents that seem to lead no-where.  I will address myself to you the unknown reader, or to an unidentified known reader, or to God, or to the ether, or to myself.  I.e., while this will be an exercise in writing, I will be quite indulgent w/ myself, and I make no promises to the reader!    The main reason I will write is because I need to express myself in writing.  I write in letters because these are mostly personal reflections that I’d like to voice to an Other; whether or not answered, they are sent.

~Mack