Category: Life

Wise Words for Confused Times…

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ Leave a comment

Dr. Jenell Williams Paris is the author of The End of Sexual Identity: Why Sex Is Too Important to Define Who We Are. She told Relevant that Christians need more than rules to live chastely. What’s often missing, Paris believes, is a compelling story and an understanding of the “whys” behind the rules. To explain what she means, she uses the example of parents teaching their little girl to look both ways before crossing a street:

A young child may follow this rule solely because of the power of her parents’ authority, which is appropriate. As she grows, the child [continues to look both ways,] but for a deeper reason that she owns for herself. She sees the broader context of traffic, understands the benefits and dangers, and makes choices accordingly. Rules are external and authority-bound: Maturity requires knowledge of why to do the right thing, not just what the right thing is.

 

Read more here…

Just Reading…

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ Leave a comment

an article on sexuality where a person in favor of abandoning the historic Christian wisdom on this quotes the Golden Rule, urging the readers to allow others to follow a different path rooted in a permissiveness based on how they would like to be treated themselves. If you enjoy marriage how can you follow the Golden Rule and deny others the right to the same?

Well, as it turns out if I get caught up in some form of darkness I hope people, inspired by love and in a firm but caring manner, come to my rescue. I hope they would do this for me not because they are malicious but because they care. Yes, it would be hard to hear. Yes, it may not be received by me at the moment as words I wish to hear. Yet I would wish to have that done to me, to have someone say “John, have you considered the path you are taking can be laden with trouble?” “Have you considered that where you are at might not be the healthiest place?”

At its heart the Golden Rule is not about “Live and let live” so much as it is a call to remind those who are helping the other, who are encountering the other, to do so in a manner reflecting not harsh judgment or exalting oneself in the face of another’s sins and struggle but rather to be both truthful and merciful, to approach the wounded, the other, the lost, the struggling, as you would like to be approached if the positions were reversed.  It reminds us of our mutuality as sinners with each other and also of the grace that is available to all as well.

Yes, Virginia, there is right and wrong and a right and a wrong way to proclaim and live it as well. Thus the Golden Rule.

I Think…

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ Leave a comment

that perhaps one of the reasons the imperfections of the world, both minor and horrible, are allowed to continue is to stop us in our tracks, remind us of what might be, and call our thoughts higher. Everything here is temporary. Everything here, no matter how good or beautiful, is tinged with sadness, colored with imperfection, flavored by a struggle. Its a kind of wisdom to understand this and to, upon reflecting on it, live lightly on this Earth and fully in the Kingdom of God.

Good Words…

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ Leave a comment

No wonder, then, that it is so hard to be Christian–it is not hard it is impossible. No one can knowingly accept a way of life which, the more truly it is lived, leads more surely to one’s own destruction. And that is why we constantly rebel, try to make life easier, try to be half-Christian, try to make the best of both worlds. We must ultimately choose–our felicity lies in one world or the other, not in both.

Fr. Seraphim Rose

Worth Reading…

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ Leave a comment

God does not matter practically—in the practices of everyday life—because the chief end of man in modernity is the maintenance of control over reality, and we can adequately achieve such dominance through science and technology (and through social and cultural institutions that are scientific and technically ordered). As Gay puts it, “a modern society is one in which the prevailing conception of the human task in the world is that of mastery by way of systematic manipulation.”

Read more here.

Memorial Day…

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ Leave a comment

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

It's as Gray a Day…

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ Leave a comment

as I can remember. The rain has been falling for hours while the cats sleep it all away on the living room floor. A ceiling fan quietly twists and hums through its duties and the irregular drops of water tap on the windows like lost children.

There are things to do today. In fact there’s a lot to do. Why people want to be in such a hurry to get out in the “real” world puzzles me. The chores, the things you do because you have to and the people you have to deal with are hardly any fair payment in return for being able to vote and walk into a liquor store. Work, at least work as it has become, is what happened when the world fell from its former grace. Its part of what some folks call the “curse” of the days beyond Eden and it has meaning only because the goodness of those days still somehow finds a way to shine through the cracks in the wall around the garden.

We were designed to be Farmers and Priests, caretakers of the good world given to us and singers of praise to its Maker. Now we live in cubicles, try to make our way through the gibberish, and if not by the sweat of our brow we make our way through the years by the sweat of our soul. Adam had no axe, there was no disfigurement to prune away, no death to remove from its place, no need even for a fire in the warmth of God’s life. Yet all that is past now. The tree could not be removed and we face the morning with a sigh.

It’s time to go now. Time to shower. Time to shave. Time to put on the best face for the day. In the car we go with the rest of the herd, crawling like ants in hope of sugar. It’s why people waste their money on the lottery and push their kids to be rock stars, the hope to be free of it all.

It’s a sign, too, that we were designed for something better and there is a place for us yet to go. The traces of Eden and the hope of heaven have not left us. They are instinctual, primal, and basic. They are why we sigh in the morning, fall into restless sleep at night, and think about what could have been on gray rainy mornings.