Blessed Are the Bored in Spirit - Mark Hart

Blessed Are the Bored in Spirit (eBook)

A Young Catholic's Search for Meaning

Mark Hart (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2022 | 1. Auflage
144 Seiten
Servant (Verlag)
978-1-63582-284-7 (ISBN)

'My image of God the Father, enthroned in heaven in flowing white robes and Birkenstock sandals, was overshadowed by my certainty that he didn't want me to have any fun. God was all about rules.' -from Chapter Five. Too many young Catholics experience their faith as Mark Hart did: They rarely miss Mass even if they don't understand it; they have a Bible even if they never read it; they go to confession even if they aren't particularly repentant. Is that your experience of Catholicism? Is yours a faith of Thou Shalt Nots? If so, forget about a dreary life of mindless obedience to rules you don't understand. It's time to enter into the transforming light of your Creator who invites you to live from the still center of his undying love. The author's humorous and hard-hitting reflections drive home the point that God isn't calling the reader to be a good person-someone who merely obeys the rules-but a new person in Jesus Christ.

"e;My image of God the Father, enthroned in heaven in flowing white robes and Birkenstock sandals, was overshadowed by my certainty that he didn't want me to have any fun. God was all about rules."e; -from Chapter Five. Too many young Catholics experience their faith as Mark Hart did: They rarely miss Mass even if they don't understand it; they have a Bible even if they never read it; they go to confession even if they aren't particularly repentant. Is that your experience of Catholicism? Is yours a faith of Thou Shalt Nots? If so, forget about a dreary life of mindless obedience to rules you don't understand. It's time to enter into the transforming light of your Creator who invites you to live from the still center of his undying love. The author's humorous and hard-hitting reflections drive home the point that God isn't calling the reader to be a good person-someone who merely obeys the rules-but a new person in Jesus Christ.

•CHAPTER ONE•

Crashing to Earth: Conversion 101

PASSENGERS FREAKED. OXYGEN MASKS DROPPED DOWN. Lights flickered. Children cried. The cabin lost power. The plane lost altitude. The attendant masked her obvious fear with a fainthearted, “Everything is under control.” The pilot, too, lied through his teeth over the microphone—until it cut out mid-sentence.

Just like that, denominational boundaries ceased to exist. Everyone, it seemed, made the Sign of the Cross or variations thereof. Maybe they weren’t all doing it correctly, but I can’t imagine that God was going to grade anyone too hard on “right to left” or “left to right.”

It was a roller coaster of emotion for the next several minutes as we rapidly lost altitude and prepared for an emergency landing. The electrical system flickered on and off in the main cabin. I buried my face in my hands and prepared to meet Jesus. How did I get to this point? in my life? in my faith? on this plane?

Just a “Plane” Old Mornin’

The sun had broken through my bedroom window that morning, unwelcome. The alarm clock radio spewed out the same inane drivel I had come to expect from morning disc jockeys. I had dragged my corpus to the bathroom and stared into the mirror eyeing a creation only God could love. Sheet marks separated the top and bottom halves of my face. The crust in the corners of my eyes cracked and fell, and my breath could have killed a rhinoceros. It was a typical morning. I was overtired, and to make things worse, I had to hurry to catch a plane.

I arrived at the airport to face the usual unpleasantries of crowds and lines, each person acting more superior than the next. Stressed-out business people competed on their cell phones to see whose conversation would reveal the most demanding and important job. The competition took a dramatic turn when one executive, apparently nervous about his impending flight, vomited while standing in line. A member of the airport janitorial staff quickly came to the rescue and purged the offending stench. The question about who had the most important job had now received a definitive answer: the janitor.

The overburdened airport security squad moved at a glacial pace. Meanwhile, the man in front of me apparently had overslept and had decided that a Monday-morning shower was optional.

Yes, I was in a bad mood. But after all, I hadn’t had my coffee yet. Isn’t it disconcerting that we so easily say, “I haven’t had my coffee yet” to excuse a myriad of sins, from rudeness to indignation? But I was thankful for that loophole this particular morning.

After the airline gate crew cattle-prodded us onto the plane, I fought for the overhead space that my discounted Web fare clearly did not deserve. Then I sank into the seat and immediately wondered what on earth could be less comfortable than this seat—the foldout bed in my grandparents’ den, maybe, or some medieval torture device?

The flight attendant did the little puppet show I had seen a thousand times. The child next to me asked me 1,214 questions between the time we pushed back from the gate and hit our cruising altitude. At this point, I noticed that the latch on the bathroom door was faulty, leaving the door to strike the doorplate with annoying rhythm. I made a mental note to refuse the mysterious processed egg food the sky waitress offered as “breakfast.”

Impatiently, I awaited that glorious “ding” that alerts passengers that they can move about the cabin or access their electronic devices and drift off into a sleep-deprived coma, entertained by their favorite forms of media.

Why do I remember all the details of this morning so vividly? It wasn’t because of the freshness of the peanuts. In the moment normally reserved for the “ding,” a quite different sound greeted us. It was loud and jolting, like a semi that had plowed into a yak at ninety miles per hour on the freeway. It struck fear into everyone on board.

It was then that I buried my face in my hands and prepared to meet Jesus. Those who have had near-death experiences often say that their whole life flashed before their eyes. Not me, at least not at first. My life didn’t flash before my eyes; random thoughts did. Who will feed my dogs? I wondered. I didn’t call Mom back, I recalled. Did I throw that load in the dryer? Maybe it was just a defense mechanism. But a profound, thought-provoking time it was not.

That is, not until I thought about looking into Jesus’ eyes. Then, gripped by sadness, not fear, I felt my soul get ripped open. My mind reached back not to my unaccomplished goals but rather to my accomplished sins. All the ways that I had mistreated others and mistreated myself before I “got into my faith,” all that sin came rushing back with a force I had never before known.

I uttered the profoundest and sincerest prayer I had ever directed toward my Creator: “God, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry for the man I was before I really knew you.”

It was so tangible, so real. It was authentic. It encompassed all I had felt during years of going through the motions in my Catholic faith when I was searching for God. It included every way I had fallen short and everything I had done wrong. All of this came to the forefront. I was sure a more perfect prayer would never cross my lips.

Fifteen seconds later, I proved myself wrong. Something clicked in my soul and a tear welled in my right eye. Clenching my teeth and swallowing a volleyball of emotion, I then uttered a more perfect prayer, the most humbling of my young life: “Lord, I am so sorry for the man I have been since I have known you.”

There it was. I had let the cat out of the bag and chased it down. There was no more hiding from my sin, no more claiming ignorance or justifying selfishness. There I was in all my failure, with all of my excuses; there I was in all of my selfish glory and sin. All those dots were finally connected.

Suddenly, the unending homilies that had never captured my attention and yet had become obscurely etched in my head started to make sense. Those times I put me first and God second, thinking he wouldn’t notice, rushed to the forefront. Those moments of selfishness, when I used my talents for my own gain and glory rather than for God, became clear to me. I realized all of the ways I had used and misused my body, and misused others, all in an effort to attain the one thing I could never attain without God: true joy.

That prayer time was more jolting to me than touching down on the runway with faulty landing gear. It was more real than inching through the terminal besieged by airline and emergency personnel. The worst morning of my earthly life had just become the greatest morning of my heavenly quest.

The morning of the crash landing holds an important place in my memory and a practical place in my faith life. It was memorable less for the details surrounding the excitement on board than for the revelation I had about myself. I was not stressed by the events. God’s grace had a lot to do with that. I was a “good person” by most standards. I made it to Mass. I got to confession here and there. I tried to follow God, tried to do what was right, treated people fairly and did my best to be nice. I didn’t cheat on my girlfriend, my taxes or my time sheet.

That comfort was my downfall. I fell into the trap. I thought that going to church and being a good person were all that God wanted from me. I was wrong. That morning on the plane I received one of God’s greatest gifts—perspective.

Conversion Theory

Remember when you were a kid and the snooze button was your best friend? Maybe after you took two or three taps to the snooze followed by a couple of vicious slaps, your mom would yell to you. Ten minutes later she’d yell again. Finally, she’d pop in and give you the time (always five minutes later than it actually was). As a last resort, she’d shake you until you sat up and promised that you were awake. That final jolt was the last step in the painful process meant to get you up to join the living.

Well, the truth was that the crash landing didn’t wake me up; it was the final step in an arduous journey that had begun years before. That morning was the jolt I needed in the ongoing process that carried me beyond conversion.

People talk freely about their conversion. You can hear them on Christian radio stations. You can see them on the Christian cable channels. Have you ever noticed that most conversion stories have the horrible-sinner-to-amazing-saint twist, a change so vast that even that of Jekyll and Hyde pales in comparison? Have you ever felt that your own story lacked that kind of dramatic intensity, and then questioned the sincerity of your conversion?

But the goal of the Christian life is far more than ceasing destructive or sinful behaviors. The goal is surrender to God. In that surrender, we receive the grace to abandon a life of selfishness and embrace a life of selflessness. To my thinking, that’s the difference between conversion to Christ, which often primarily involves the mind, and transformation in Christ, which involves action—a change in environment, speech, conduct and motivation.

Conversions are wonderful in that they lead sinful people to become good people or at least better people. But the harsh truth is that Jesus isn’t calling...

Erscheint lt. Verlag	15.12.2022
Sprache	englisch
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Religion / Theologie ► Christentum
ISBN-10	1-63582-284-X / 163582284X
ISBN-13	978-1-63582-284-7 / 9781635822847

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