Friday, January 28, 2011

40 Days for Life




For anyone from Notre who would like to be involved, email me.
For anyone would like more information or who is not from Notre who would like to be involved, go to http://www.justicemandate.org/

Thursday, January 20, 2011

Many Parts.

Today it the Third Day in the Octave of Prayer for Christian Unity.
I could write about, or I could deffer to the Successor of Peter. I will do the latter.

Saturday, January 15, 2011

Power

Work over time.

We rightly acclaim that God is all-powerful, but how do we know?

This answer often given: “Because He can do all things,” and, while not being incorrect, it is not the best answer. Indeed, it is not entirely true. God cannot be Creature since He is Creator; His is not - and cannot be - Kelly who sits on the train to write this blog.

God is all-powerful because he acts outside of time. All of what God does He is doing now and has already done. Kind of. It is difficult to talk about God in the positive, St Thomas Aquinas explains this well, because He is completely Other to what we know and what we have the capability to understand. It is easy to say what God is not: He is not the Sun, since that is created; He is not air, nor is he the space between the electrons of an atom and the nucleus; He is not some particle waiting to be defined by physicists; He is not animal vegetable or mineral; He Is.

But we can say so much about God! We can say that He is merciful, kind and loving; we even say - correctly - that God is Love!
Yes, we can say so much about God, but that is not what God is. ‘God is merciful and kind’ can even be changed into ‘God is Mercy and Kindness’ which is not wrong - it is, instead, profoundly correct - but that too tells us precious little. What is mercy or kindness? You know what it is to be merciful and to receive mercy, but how do you say what mercy is, or kindness?

But Kelly! God is infinite and omnipotent, is that not two things that describe Him in the positive?
We are getting closer. To say God is infinite though, simply means that he’s not finite. God cannot be finite because the sum of the parts of a finite thing is greater than each of the parts on their own. In saying that God is infinite, we are still only describing him in a false-positive; we have yet to say something about God in the positive.

Thus, we turn to God’s omnipotence. Surely this is the thing, if any, that we can say about God using positive terminology. “God is all-powerful.” We know what power is. It is work done over a period of time. That is not a mere scientific definition, it is true when we speak of powerful people. The sooner something happens after the powerful person commands it, the more powerful we say they are. This is increasingly true when what they command is complex.

What could be more complex than creating the Universe with all that it hold and keeping it running according to your will? And then to do it without time? Surely this is all powerful.

But here we find a similar time of ambiguity we had with calling God Love or Mercy or Kindness. How does something exist outside of time?
Douglas Adams describes the experience of infinity similar to that which would allow us to experience out-of-time-ness. Adams says, “suddenly Arthur had a fairly clear idea of what infinity looked like…The chamber into which the aircar emerged was anything but infinite, it was just very very very big, so ig that it gave in impression of infinity far better than infinity itself.”

What are we to make of this? I would like to suggest that, just as it is easier to get a clearer picture of infinity from something that is simply extremely large than it is from infinity itself, it is easier to understand out-of-time-ness by regarding an immensely small amount of time.
Think about your fastest reaction time, about 0.215 seconds. That is not small enough.
 Think about the amount of time between a ball hitting a bat and you hearing the sound if you’re 10 metres away, about 0.029387 seconds. That, too, is not small enough.
Think about seeing an office building’s lights turn off from about a kilometre away, about 0.0000333564 second. That’s still not close enough.
Consider, then, the amount of time between the ball hitting the bat and you seeing it from 10m. That’s about 3.3357 × 10^-8 seconds or 0.00000033357 seconds. We’re getting closer, now.
Think about sitting 10cm away from a light globe when it’s turned on. The difference in its lighting up and you seeing that is 0.000000003.333564 seconds (3.333564 x 10^-10).

 It seems instantaneous, but it’s not.
It’s like God does in an infinite amount of work in an infinitely small amount of time.
When God acts, it is instantaneous.

Power = Work/time
P = ∞
W = ∞
t = 0




God divides by zero.

Why I go shopping with Tom.

Monday, January 10, 2011

Crack-whore

Crack-whore

The campus minister at my Uni suggested to me a few times that I might like to try some crack-cocaine, to which I replied that if he was going to be my dealer, at least in the interim, I saw no reason why not.



Now, for those of you who don’t know TAG, this may seem an exceedingly strange (and even morally questionable) suggestion from a Catholic campus minister at a Catholic university. Those who do know him, however, will know - either from an educated guess or because he has made a similar suggestion to you - that he is not suggesting I take up an illicit substance.

TAG knows that I’ve been struggling to order my priorities in the past year and, so, suggested that I may want to take up crack as an analogy for discerning my top priority and sticking to that, making sure it comes before all else. Naturally, the next most important will fall into line and the third thereafter and so on.

In a sense, my campus minister suggested that what ever it is that becomes my number one priority ought to have a certain addictive quality about it. In this way - the suggestion runs - I will necessarily commit myself to fulfilling my priority.

My move and the quiet that is currently in my new house has given me time to think over my priorities; that, and an exercise set by my spiritual director. The answer seems crazily simple. There is only One that should be my priority, and this, this I have known since as long as I can recall. That is not the simple part. I have always struggled over how I could make my other priorities ordered around that. “Surely,” I reasoned, to myself, “it would be easier to become addicted to family or studies or friends or helping others, than to place God as my number one priority. Is not love for others the most concrete way of showing love for God?” But this has been my problem: if I don’t place God first in my life, how do I know which other aspect of my life or being is to come first?

God is easy to become addicted to. People who ‘don’t really believe’ in Him but happen to go to Mass for two consecutive Sundays have said to me that they feel guilty or ‘bad’ for not going the following Sunday. I have found, recently, that the more time I spend in Eucharistic Adoration, the more time I want to spend there. It becomes less and less of a chore. So many other things have had to wait an hour or three while I go to adoration. Just last night - a case in point - I attended my rostered Hour and found myself unable to leave for some two hours after mine had been completed. Why? Because I could not see anything better to be doing; not even sleep, late as it was. It is so very, very easy to become addicted to God.

My problem now, that is, now that I’ve decided to place God as my number One, is that I must remember that there are many aspects to my relationship with God. For example, it can - and very probably will -  become extremely easy for me to shirk my studies in favour of contemplative time spend in front of the Blessed Sacrament or at Mass, or at some other devotion. Therefore, I need to view all my responsibilities as Services to my Lord and God. My course of study was chosen that I might gain a better understanding of the faith which I profess. Serving others is the most concrete way to outwardly display my love of Him and it is the best and easiest form of evangelisation.

For 2011, my One and Only priority is God, Most High.
For 2011, I will dedicate my self ardently to my studies so that I will come to a more clear understanding of the Faith I profess.
For 2011, my Service to those around me will be securely tied to my Service of He who is the Creator of us all.
For 2011, my New Years Resolution and my only goal is God.

This year, I will become utterly addicted to my God. Those around me will know, by the end of the year, that I will only be friends with my enablers - with those who feed my addiction. Everyday, if I don’t get my ‘hit’, those around me will know and will find some way of allowing me to get it.


And so I sign off this post:
Addicted to God
For His greater Glory
For Ever and Ever.

Amen

Thursday, January 6, 2011

Do I know you?

Not-that-suprisingly, I get asked this question a fair bit. I'm told it's because I look like the questioner's long lost sister's husband's aunty's pet-dog's previous owner's daughter orsomethinglikethat; that is I just have one of those faces, I guess.

I was asked again earlier this afternoon and it got me thinking about recognition of the ones we love. It also reminded, by extrapolation, of what my Best Friend said about the end of time.
You can read it here - in three languages!

There is much that can be reflected on, to do with that parable which he told me. However, I now lack the time to expound on my thoughts.

Perhaps you'd care to share some of yours, Dear Reader?



Peace.
AMDG

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Hamlet and a Comic Book for Religion.

In this video, Fr Barron from Word on Fire Ministries comments on "Dumbed Down" Catholicism.