Time to relax

A video time-out with a salute to the era of the Yardbirds and Led Zeppelin

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To be unprovable in principle, and self-evidentally so

The Cambridge University cosmologist John D Barrow died late last year, and I have just read something that he wrote that has significance because of its relevancy beyond his own field. His statement shows his deep thought relating to the interface between the search to know God and the scientific enterprise.

His statement came as part of the 2005 Edge.org "big question", which was: "What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it?" Unlike many others', Barrow's answer was short but pithy. He submitted this statement:

That our universe is infinite in size, finite in age, and just one among many. Not only can I not prove it but I believe that these statements will prove to be unprovable in principle and we will eventually hold that principle to be self-evident.

John D Barrow

Of course, it's the second sentence that holds most significance for those who are dismayed at the adversary nature of science and religion, when science is reductionist on the basis of what is material or physical when it comes to evidence for God, the mind and will (or the soul), and - on the oposing side -  religious fundamentalists (and not all believers) who refuse to recognise well-established scientific findings.  

"Unprovable in principle and ... [holding] that principle to be self-evident." This has echoes of Stephen Jay Gould's principle of Non-Overlapping Magisteria (NOMA) of 1997: "Science tries to document the factual character of the natural world, and to develop theories that coordinate and explain these facts. Religion, on the other hand, operates in the equally important, but utterly different, realm of human purposes, meanings, and values—subjects that the factual domain of science might illuminate, but can never resolve."

Simply put Barrow might say, for example, that science will never be able to prove the source or dimensions of the transphysical mind, so it should stick with the facts concerning the material or quantifiable, such as the body and brain, or even the size and number of how many universes there might be around us. 

In fact, Barrow did try to illuminate areas that would be unprovable, and met knockbacks for that effort from rigid colleagues. 

However, Professor Paul Davies, a cosmologist at Arizona State University, had this to say in his Scientific American tribute to Barrow: "A truly great scientist not only makes significant technical contributions but also reshapes a discipline’s conceptual landscape through a commanding depth and breadth of vision."  And Barrow's vision allowed him to be creative within physics:

The centerpiece of this approach was a remarkable book published in 1986 and co-authored with physicist Frank Tipler entitled The Anthropic Cosmological Principle. It built on the recognition that if the initial state of the universe or the fundamental constants of physics had deviated—in some cases, by just a tiny amount—from the values we observe, the universe would not be suitable for life. The book is a detailed and extensive compilation of such felicitous biofriendly “coincidences,” and it became a canonical reference text for a generation of physicists. It also provoked something of a backlash for flirting with notions of cosmic purpose and straying too close to theology in some people’s eyes. Nevertheless, its style of “anthropic” reasoning subsequently became a familiar part of the theorist’s arsenal, albeit a still contentious one.

From this summary above we see that even in science there are approaches that are shunned simply because they are not in fashion given the prejudices of the elite of the field, without regard to whether the new ideas are intellectually sound or not. Barrow was strong enough to forge ahead:

His adventurous choices of research problems typified Barrow’s intellectual style, which was to challenge the hidden assumptions underpinning cherished mainstream theories. Fundamental problems in physics and cosmology may appear intractable, he reasoned, because we are thinking about them the wrong way. It was a mode of thought that resonated with many colleagues, this writer included, who are drawn to reflect on the deepest questions of existence.

Perhaps Barrow's success arose because of the breadth of his interests. His was not a blinkered existence and that allowed his science to range widely and appreciate insights from beyond the confines of the material world. Davies describes this element in Barrow's life and work:

Barrow’s scholarship and writing extended to art theory, musicology, history, philosophy and religion—a grasp of human culture aptly recognized by an invitation to deliver the prestigious Centenary Gifford Lectures at the University of Glasgow in 1989 and also by the 2006 Templeton Prize [for Progress Toward Research or Discoveries About Spiritual Realities]. These acknowledgments were in addition to many notable scientific and academic honors, including being made a Fellow of the Royal Society.

To conclude, the Edge question for in 2005 was: What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it? Answers were given by 120 scientists and intellectuals. Each expressed the fact that they believed something but could not prove it. That humility as to the limits at any one time of science and technology is welcome. 

[] Those interested in exploring the evidence for the existence of the mind, our transcendental or transphysical nature (our "soul") should avail themselves of the resources at the Magis Center. 

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Morals and markets and the common good Part 2

                                       - New York Times headline April 24, 2021

The New York Times story makes this point: "The coronavirus plunged the world into an economic crisis, sent the U.S. unemployment rate skyrocketing and left millions of Americans struggling to make ends meet. Yet at many of the companies hit hardest by the pandemic, the executives in charge were showered with riches."

My March post on this topic focused on how markets must not be regarded as a morality-free zone. The way the individuals in the business elite plump for self-interest within their select group leaves a stain of corruption on all who are business leaders. I had these deplorable figures in my information:

On Twitter this week the US figures were again highlighted with tweets discussing data that CEO pay growth from 1979-2019 was 1167%, whereas worker pay growth from 1979-2019 was 13.7%. These US figures came out last year in a report by the Economic Policy Institute.  

The Times has this information:

Boeing had a historically bad 2020. Its 737 Max was grounded for most of the year after two deadly crashes, the pandemic decimated its business, and the company announced plans to lay off 30,000 workers and reported a $12 billion loss. Nonetheless, its chief executive, David Calhoun, was rewarded with some $21.1 million in compensation.

Norwegian Cruise Line barely survived the year. With the cruise industry at a standstill, the company lost $4 billion and furloughed 20 percent of its staff. That didn’t stop Norwegian from more than doubling the pay of Frank Del Rio, its chief executive, to $36.4 million.

And at Hilton, where nearly a quarter of the corporate staff were laid off as hotels around the world sat empty and the company lost $720 million, it was a good year for the man in charge. Hilton reported in a securities filing that Chris Nassetta, its chief executive, received compensation worth $55.9 million in 2020. 

 As a final comment, a quotation used in my previous post:

But that behaviour is the logical consequence of the individualism that has been our substitute for morality since the 1960s: the ‘I’ that takes precedence over the ‘We’. How could we reject the claims of traditional morality in every other sphere of life and yet expect them to prevail in the heat of the marketplace?

Read on my Substack website for a new perspective 

Dramatic realism of the resurrection event

From the Jesus Pantocrator icon, about the 6th Century, at St Catherine's Monastery, Mount Sinai, Egypt

"Look, I'm not a ghost”, Jesus told his followers. “A ghost doesn't have flesh and bones as you can see that I have." Then he said: “Do you have anything to eat?”, and they gave him a piece of baked fish. It’s this realism that Bishop Robert Barron of Los Angeles finds so dramatic and significant about the Easter events. Barron’s examination of the account is thorough:

Today, I'm going to harp on something. I'm going to harp on it because a) the Bible harps on it a lot, and b) because our culture often misses it. What I'm going to harp on is the very strangeness of the resurrection.

Maybe it's 10 years ago or longer, when David Cameron was prime minister of Britain, he was giving a little speech on Easter, and he was trying to articulate the significance of Easter. Here's what he said: "The message of Easter is kindness, compassion, hard work, and responsibility."

Now, I know he was trying to appeal very broadly to anyone that'd be listening. And don't get me wrong, I'm for kindness, compassion, hard work, and responsibility, too. But my guess is that any decent person would be, believer or nonbeliever. A Hindu, Muslim, Jew, Buddhist —anybody would be in favor of these values.

Therefore, that can't be the meaning of Easter. That can't be the meaning of the resurrection.

It's a typical attempt, though, in our contemporary setting to kind of domesticate the resurrection.

What does the resurrection mean? It means that Jesus of Nazareth, who in his public ministry consistently acted and spoke in the very person of God, who was brutally put to death by the Roman authorities, rose bodily from the dead and appeared alive to his disciples — not an abstraction, not a symbol for some moral or spiritual state of affairs, but this bodily resurrection of this particular man from the dead.

I'm going to read a little bit here from this magnificent twenty-fourth chapter of Luke, which is filled with these marvelous accounts of the resurrection. This is right after the Emmaus account, and the Eleven are gathered in the upper room.

And it says, "While they were still speaking about this, he [Jesus] stood in their midst and said to them, 'Peace be with you.' But they were startled and terrified and thought that they were seeing a ghost.... [But he said,] 'Look at my hands and my feet, that it is I myself.

Touch me and see, because a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you can see I have.'"

I submit to you, everybody, that's a very strange text. Just as they were startled and terrified by the appearance of Jesus, I think we should be a little startled and terrified by this message.

Turning it into a bland statement about "Be a nice person" is entirely missing the point of the resurrection.

Let me try to shed some more light on this by setting up a contrast between this extraordinary account and what a first-century Jew might've been thinking about what happens to us after we die. Because this didn't happen in a vacuum — Jews of the first century had ideas, based in the biblical tradition, about what happens to people when they die. These are all on display in the Bible.

First of all, a view —and it was still held by many, still widely held by many Jews today— that death is just the end. That when we die, we go back to dust and that's it. We're dead. It's over.

A second view, also on display in the Bible, is that the dead go to a kind of shadowy underworld. It's called Sheol in the Scriptures. It's a bit like Hades, what you find in Greek and Roman mythology — this kind of unappealing underworld where people are present, they're alive, but not the way they used to be. That's Sheol.

Another view, you can find it in the book of Daniel. This is read, by the way, at almost every Catholic funeral. It says, "The souls of the just are in the hand of God and no torment shall touch them." This idea is that, after we die, the body goes into the earth, but the soul survives.

Now, that's not entirely unlike what some of the Greek philosophers held. So Socrates and Plato would have held some version of that: that our souls escape from the prison of the body, and they live on.

Here's still another view that's on display in the Bible, and in Jesus' time, the Pharisees would have held to this very strongly — namely, that we can hope, at the end of time, all the righteous dead will come back to life in the general resurrection.

Okay. All of those views were on offer. They were held by people in Jesus' time and place.

I want you to notice, what's being described here in Luke 24 — it's not any of that. Certainly not the case that, well, the dead just die and that's it. No, here's Jesus, who died, and he's alive. He's present to them. They're not talking about someone who's gone down to the shadowy realm of Sheol. They're not talking about that.

Remember in the Old Testament when, it's the Witch of Endor calls forth the shade of the prophet Samuel from the realm of Sheol. That's not what's being described here at all,

but someone who stands before them, and he says, "Look, I'm not a ghost. A ghost doesn't have flesh and bones as you can see that I have."

This is not the view that Jesus died, his body went into the earth, and his soul went to heaven.

That's not being described here at all. This is not a disembodied soul. No, no. Here he is, standing in their midst.

Maybe the closest we've come is to say, what many Jews expected of all the righteous dead at the end of time has happened to this man in the midst of history.

Jesus, alive, body and soul, standing before them. Jesus, who had been killed, brutally put to death, now through the power of the Holy Spirit alive again in their midst.

I love this detail. It's unique to Luke. It says, when they were "incredulous for sheer joy and amazed." By the way, what a beautiful reaction to the Resurrection: incredulous for sheer joy, and they were amazed. He said to them, "Have you got anything here to eat?"

Don't you love the realism of that?

Here's the risen Jesus, wants something to eat, and they give him, it says, “a piece of baked fish," and "he took it and ate it in front of them." May I say again here—and this maybe is for people today who want to domesticate the resurrection, turning it into a bland symbol — this has nothing to do with dreams, and hallucinations, and vague ideas, and velleities [mere wishes without action].

No, no; this man, once dead, now standing before them, with flesh and bones, and eating fish that they gave to him.

Everybody, that's the strangeness, that's the radicality of the resurrection.

Do you believe it, or not? Do you find deep joy in it? That's the question. That's the challenge that Easter gives us year after year.

Okay? Now, once we see that, can we also discern why this matters so much?

And can I suggest just two implications by looking at the first two readings?

First of all, we have this, in the Acts of the Apostles, magnificent speech of St. Peter.

It's a kerygmatic sermon. "Kerygma" means the basic message of the Gospel. So when Peter in the earliest days gets up and tells the people what Christianity is all about, that's the sermon. Now listen to him:

"The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob ... has glorified his servant Jesus, whom you handed over and denied in Pilate’s presence.... You denied the Holy and Righteous One and asked that a murderer be released to you. The author of life you put to death."

May I suggest, by the way, this is not someone tickling the ears of his listeners. This is not someone trying to ingratiate himself with his audience. No, no; he's laying it out pretty clearly.

St. Peter is seeing the resurrection as an affirmation of Jesus. The one who spoke and acted in the very person of God is revealed not to be a liar or a fraud, but true, righteous.

But more than that, the message of the resurrection is also a judgment on all of us sinners, who, in varying ways and to varying degrees, put him to death.

Again, let this line sink into your heart as I let it sink into mine. "The author of life you put to death."

You see how the resurrection of Jesus —and I don't mean some vague fantasy; I mean, God raising Jesus bodily from the dead —is a judgment on all of those who contributed to his crucifixion.

It's a judgment on the cruelty, and the hatred, and the injustice, and the self-absorption that produced the crucifixion.

See, if the resurrection's a vague symbol, then I am not all that challenged in my sin. Then these words of Peter aren't going to cut me to the heart if the resurrection’s a vague symbol.

But if through the power of the Spirit, God the Father raises Jesus from the dead, and he stands before me, I see in his wounds a judgment on me. An extraordinary implication of the resurrection.

And look how Peter's sermon ends.  "Repent, therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be wiped away."

Again, this is not ingratiating rhetoric. This is drawing out a very important moral and spiritual implication of the resurrection: that we must come to repentance.

And here's a second implication now, drawn from our second reading from that marvelous First Letter of John. John speaks of an Advocate we now have in heaven. That’s beautiful, isn't it?

What does the resurrection mean?

It means that this Jesus who was a denizen of the earth, this Jesus who walked among us, bodily present among us, has now been raised to a participation in the very life of heaven.

See, biblical religion, everybody, is not like Greek philosophy. It's not a story of let's endeavor to escape from matter to a higher realm. No; it's a story of how heaven and earth are meant to come together.

Remember in the Our Father: "Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven." That's a prayer that these two realms might meet.

How beautiful that the resurrected Christ eats this piece of fish they gave him. That means that this lowly humanity of ours in Christ has been elevated to the heavenly place.

We have an Advocate — a brother of ours who walked the same earth, breathed the same air. A brother of ours has now been brought into the heavenly space. And in that advocacy, we find extraordinary hope.

Can I suggest, next time you go to Mass, attend to the language of the prayers. They're often this language of heaven and earth meeting, because that's exactly what Jesus means. "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us"; Jesus' flesh now elevated to heaven. You see how a connection between heaven and earth has been established.

That's what the Resurrection means.

Turn the Resurrection into a vague myth or symbol? Then none of this powerful cosmological truth is expressed.

So, the bottom line: Can I urge you, sometime [especially] during this Easter season, open up your Bibles to Luke chapter 24, a kind of masterpiece within the masterpiece.

Enter into these accounts of the resurrection and realize the full radicality of what is being claimed: Jesus Christ, truly risen from the dead.

See this also at Substack here. 

Do something creative every day to be happy

Another film by Sam Fathallah, who is still making films, both for artistic reasons and for a living. However, I hope the young people we meet are as creative now as they were eight years ago. Enjoy!

 

Harari's list falls short on preparation for next pandemic

London protest against Covid lockdown and masks

Yuval Noah Harari, the author of Sapiens, Homo Deus, and 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, offers fatally limited advice to readers of Britain's Financial Times on how to prepare for the next pandemic. 

In his February article "Lessons from a year of Covid", Harari rightly praises the scientific effort that has quickly delivered useful vaccines, though he is scathing at the job done by politicians - "All too often the political wisdom has been missing" because of the habitual feuding in the political arena, and the focus on personal and national interests.

However, what counts is that politicians are society's elected leaders and scientists should leave to them the decision-making in the fight against the pandemic. 

The argument Harari presents as he makes his case also highlights from my point of view how essential it is that science and technology be held up to "human" or "social" scrutiny. He explains why science should not be granted the position of ultimate power in matters of life and death:

The Covid year has exposed an even more important limitation of our scientific and technological power. Science cannot replace politics. When we come to decide on policy, we have to take into account many interests and values, and since there is no scientific way to determine which interests and values are more important, there is no scientific way to decide what we should do.

For example, when deciding whether to impose a lockdown, it is not sufficient to ask: “How many people will fall sick with Covid-19 if we don’t impose the lockdown?”. We should also ask: “How many people will experience depression if we do impose a lockdown? How many people will suffer from bad nutrition? How many will miss school or lose their job? How many will be battered or murdered by their spouses?”

Even if all our data is accurate and reliable, we should always ask: “What do we count? Who decides what to count? How do we evaluate the numbers against each other?” This is a political rather than scientific task. It is politicians who should balance the medical, economic and social considerations and come up with a comprehensive policy.

Similarly, engineers are creating new digital platforms that help us function in lockdown, and new surveillance tools that help us break the chains of infection. But digitalisation and surveillance jeopardise our privacy and open the way for the emergence of unprecedented totalitarian regimes. In 2020, mass surveillance has become both more legitimate and more common. Fighting the epidemic is important, but is it worth destroying our freedom in the process? It is the job of politicians rather than engineers to find the right balance between useful surveillance and dystopian nightmares.

He's right in these matters: "there is no scientific way to decide what we should do"; likewise, without safeguards imposed by society, engineers could could end up "destroying our freedom" and delivering the stuff of "dystopian nightmares".  

This analysis is accurate but the advice arising from it as to preventing or combatting a future pandemic  is anemic. Here is the advice in summary:

First, we need to safeguard our digital infrastructure. It has been our salvation during this pandemic, but it could soon be the source of an even worse disaster. Second, each country should invest more in its public health system. This seems self-evident, but politicians and voters sometimes succeed in ignoring the most obvious lesson. Third, we should establish a powerful global system to monitor and prevent pandemics. 

The reason Harari falls short is that he offers no insight on how to lift the standard of human capacity in what citizens and politicians alike are willing to bear with regard solidarity and self-discipline and altruism - each demanding loving generosity and good will to others - and adherence to the common good rather than to the individualistic hedonism now well embedded in most Western nations, and increasingly to be observed elsewhere, such as in Vietnam, from where this blog originates.  

In other words, Harari fails to attend to the need to develop human capacity, which involves the ability of each person to learn across generations and within each society as to how to reason well, how to respect the dignity of others, and how important it is to serve, if that society is to be sucessful in its goal of ensuring human thriving. 

How to make it more likely that humankind will be ready to face the next pandemic or perhaps technological calamity? Buying Sam Harris's Waking Up app will not get to the heart of the human predicament;  nor by reading Enlightenment Now, where Steven Pinker celebrates the achievements of the human family just at the time where his homeland, the most prominent exemplar of enlightenment's child, individualistic materialism, is coming unstuck through the fraying of the bonds of religion, with the consequences of the destruction of discourse by both left and right, and the deluge of cases of early death and of the feeling of meaninglessness in life, which was Pinker's starting point for his book ("Why should I live?" - see his introduction to Part 1). 

Of course, Harari might expect us all to wait around until we reach the state of homo deus, but that book is as baseless as Pinker's on the big picture, on what is most important about human life. Let Harari build on his success in hitting the target on what needs to be done to avoid future catastrophes and focus on ways to solidify the moral foundation of human life, and on ways to generate the unending eruption of mutual love and respect. Enabling the divine spark to engulf each and every person's heart and mind is the certain way to "determine which interests and values are more important, [since] there is no scientific way to decide what we should do".  

Interested in reading more? Visit my Substack blog and subscribe. 

Eastertime and key facts of the empty tomb

Bishop Robert Barron. CNS photo/courtesy Word on Fire

Some people are attracted to the graves of the famous. Hundreds, even thousands of people go to graves to muse and meditate.

One such person is Catholic Bishop Robert Barron, who serves in the Los Angeles area. He studied in Paris and spent many hours in the cemeteries holding the graves of Chopin, Abelard and Heloise, and even Jim Morrison. In a video talk, Barron says of graves: “They're places of finality. They're places of peace, of contemplation.” However…

Then there's the grave that the Gospel writers are fascinated by. I'm talking about the grave of Jesus, to which three women go early on Easter Sunday morning. They've gone with oils to anoint the body, according to the Jewish custom.

They worried about who would roll the stone back, but I'm sure they were planning there to perform this ritual, and to muse and to ponder, remembering the great things that Jesus had said and done, probably feeling some anger at those that had betrayed him and denied him, probably weeping in their grief.

But they arrive, and to their infinite surprise, they find first, the stone rolled away. Has a grave robber been at work? But their astonishment only increases when, looking inside, they see not the body of Jesus but rather a young man in a white garment, who says to them, "You're looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place where they laid him."

The young man's message, to put it bluntly, was not that someone had broken into this grave, but rather that someone had broken out of it. What was their response to this shocking news?

And this is the first account we have in Mark's gospel. What's the reaction of these women?

"They went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them." Yeah, graves, sure; they're places of quiet contemplation, places to muse, places to think. Then there's this grave, from which these women run in terror.

And thereupon, brothers and sisters, hangs the tale of Easter. Jesus is not a fondly remembered figure from the past. He's not a great spiritual teacher whom we recall with fond contemplation.

We participate in the terror that these women felt as the absolute novelty and shock and surprise of Jesus' resurrection dawned upon them.

What I love about this story is it militates against all attempts to domesticate the resurrection. And there's been a lot of this up and down the Christian centuries, and certainly in our own time.

When I was going through seminary — this is some years ago — these were the kinds of books that we read in the seminary.

"Oh, Jesus’ resurrection; oh, don't read that as something that really happened. Rather, the disciples after the death of their Master, knew that his cause would go on, and so they invented this story of an empty tomb and appearances to symbolize the fact that his cause goes on."

Or this view that was held by a very prominent theologian when I was going through school — after the terrible death of Jesus, the disciples nevertheless felt forgiven, and so they expressed this conviction with the stories of the empty tomb and the appearances.

Come on. I mean, this is impossibly thin gruel, and it does not correspond to the clear sense of shock, novelty, and excitement that runs through every page of the New Testament. Can you really imagine Paul tearing into Corinth with the news that "Hey, the cause of a dead person that I admired goes on."  They would have laughed him out of town.

Can you imagine all the apostles, they go careering around the world to their own deaths — with the message that they felt forgiven? I mean, give me a break.

These attempts to flatten out and domesticate the resurrection are undermined by this fundamental witness of the facticity of the resurrection.

Can I just draw three implications, friends, from the fact of Jesus' resurrection? First of all, it means that Jesus is Lord. You'll find this phrase often in the writings of St. Paul. In his Greek, "Iesous Kyrios," Jesus is Lord. And we might say, "Well, that's a blandly spiritual thing to say." But that was deeply subversive in the first century. Why? Well, because a watchword of that time and place was "Kaisar Kyrios," Caesar's the Lord. He's the one to whom my allegiance is due. He's the one in charge of my life.

How wonderful: the first Christians, in light of the resurrection, they purposely twisted that language. Not Kaisar Kyrios; Iesous Kyrios. Mind you, someone whom Caesar put to death, but whom God raised from the dead, he's the true Lord. He's the one to whom your allegiance is due.

And furthermore, how wonderful that they proclaimed this long before there was anything like an institutional Church, long before there were armies and armies of believers. These are a handful of people who were declaring this deeply subversive message of the lordship of Jesus.

Here's a second implication of the resurrection — again, not as some thin gruel, some vague symbol, but the fact of the resurrection — that Jesus’ claims about himself are now ratified.

Unlike any of the other religious founders, Jesus consistently speaks and acts in the very person of God. "My son, your sins are forgiven."

"Who's this man think he is? Only God can forgive sins."

Right. That's the point. Jesus is speaking and acting in the very person of God. "Oh, you've heard it said in the Torah, but I say…" Well, for a first-century Jew, to claim authority over the Torah, which was the supreme authority — the only one that could possibly do that would be God himself. Uh-huh. "You've got a greater than the temple here," Jesus says, in reference to himself. Again, for a first-century Jew, the temple was the dwelling place of God. Who could possibly say he's greater than the temple, except the one who in fact dwells in the temple?

In fact, this is why Jesus is brought to the cross: this apparent blasphemy, this man claiming to be God.

And then, see, when he died on the cross, even his most ardent followers were convinced that he was a sort of a sad fraud. Think of those two disciples on the road to Emmaus. "Yeah, we thought he was the one, but clearly he's not because there'd be no greater proof possible that someone was not the Messiah of Israel, than his death at the hands of Israel's enemies. Clearly he isn't God. Clearly he was just a deluded figure."

But when he rose from the dead — and I don't mean some vague feeling they had of being forgiven; come on — when he rose from the dead and appeared alive again to them, they knew now he is exactly who he said he was. They knew that Jesus' divinity, his claimed divinity, is ratified. And therefore, we have to give our lives to him.

If he is who he says he is — not one teacher among many, but God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God — what choice do I have? I must give my life to him.

Here's a third and final implication of the Resurrection: that God's love, everybody, is more  powerful than anything that's in the world.

What brought him to his cross? Cruelty and violence and hatred and injustice and stupidity and all forms of human dysfunction. It's on that cross, he bore all of this. The sin of the world came upon him. He went into the muck and the mud of the human condition. In fact, it closed over his head.

But then in the resurrection, when Jesus says "Shalom," and he offers this peace on the far side of all the dysfunction of the world, he shows thereby that God's love is more powerful than any of it.

That's why Paul can say, "I'm certain that neither death nor life, neither angels nor principalities, neither height nor depth, nor any other power could ever separate us from the love of God."

He knows it because of the resurrection, because he saw the risen Christ. That's where we find our hope, everybody. That's where we find our salvation. That word just means our healing. What's wounded us? Well, all the darkness and sin of the world; that's what's wounded us.

In the resurrection of Jesus, we find our salvation from all this, we don't take the resurrection as some, "Oh, that's an interesting fact from long ago." Come on; come on. We take it in as the definitive sign of the lordship of Jesus, the definitive sign that he's God from God, Light from Light, the definitive sign that God's love is more powerful than anything in the world.

See also on Substack here 

Something beautiful - it's your decision

A beautiful face, an untouched stretch of beach are often more than rivaled in their impact by beautiful actions or beautiful decisions. For example, a person who has someone in their power can do something beautiful by not exercising that control over the other when it would be a simple matter to use them for their own advantage. 

The beauty arises from the decision to regard as a better thing the gifting of respect and freedom to the other person. That gift allows the other to then grow and blossom in their own right. 

Similarly there are those beautiful decisions people find able to make in extreme circumstances where they offer even their own life for the good of another. A case in point is the sharing of a kidney. 

Just as flowers need good earth and rain and fertilizer, beautiful decisions need a good imagination,  a strong mind, and a heart that has learnt to be generous and brave.

Live Not By Lies: A Manual For Christian Dissidents

"We live in a world of lies, whether we want it or not. That's just the case. But you shouldn't accommodate to it." That statement, a reflection on the present as much as the past, is from Maria Wittner, a hero of the 1956 Hungarian uprising against the Soviet occupation. 

With the developed world infected by an intellectual and spiritual poison that rivals that of the thought-control beloved within the Communist system, such insight into how to remain free is a valuable message.

Wittner is one of the survivors of the Soviet-backed totalitarian regimes in Eastern Europe after World War II that writer Rod Dreher interviewed for his book titled Live Not By Lies: A Manual For Christian Dissidents published in the United States late last year.

A Communist court sentenced Wittner to death when she was 20. However, this was commuted to life imprisonment. You have a choice, she says: "If you want to live in fear, or if you want to live in the freedom of the soul. If your soul is free, then your thoughts are free, and then your words are going to be free."

Dreher called on the experience of European dissidents such as Wittner to learn how Americans in the first instance can prepare for what he sees as a soft form of totalitarianism, epitomised by wokism and the cancel culture, where the elite of academia, the mainstream media, and the corporate world, use all the levers of power at their disposal to control what is to be regarded as morally correct and socially acceptable.

As an observer in a distant land, I grieve at the way American society has become so toxic with the decline of Christian civilisation that made the nation so attractive in the international context. Now, it's easy to identify the marks of of a rapidly developing dictatorship in the United States, which seems to go beyond that what exists or is developing in Western Europe. The social sickness so evident daily, the lack of meaning in life among the young, and the failure of older Americans to display moral strength, all point to social collapse being not far away. 

This is how Dreher summarises his well-supported thesis:

The essence of modernity is to deny that there are any transcendent stories, structures, habits, or beliefs to which individuals must submit and that should bind our conduct. To be modern is to be free to choose. What is chosen does not matter; the meaning in is in the choice itself. There is no sacred order, no other world, no fixed virtues and permanent truths. There is only here and now, and the eternal flame of human desire. Volo ergo sum - I want, therefore I am. 

Women in sport suffer concussion more than males

Australian Football Rules player Chelsea Randall after a collision with an opposing player this year

Experts say sportswomen are at higher risk of concussion than male athletes, and the effects of concussion in women tend to be more severe.

Dr Adrian Cohen, an emergency and trauma physician in Australia who researches concussion prevention, says women sustain more concussions than men in high-impact sports such as rugby league, rugby union and Australian rules football. Women also take longer to recover.

One possibility is that women may be more likely to report concussion. But Dr Cohen says there are complex physiological factors at play.

"There are structural differences between men and women's brains," he says. "They actually have a slightly faster metabolism than male brains, and they have slightly greater oxygen flow to the head.

"The cells themselves can be thought of as being slightly hungrier. So in the context of an injury that disrupts the supply of glucose and oxygen, it can help explain why they suffer more damage."

He also says women are joining high impact sports without years of tackle training and have had less opportunity to build up the strong neck muscles crucial in protecting against impact.

Dr Rowena Mobbs, a neurologist at Australia’s Macquarie University who researches and treats the effects of concussion in sportspeople, says there is truth to suggestions that women experience concussion symptoms more severely.

"But there is this really important overlap of chronic migraine after trauma, and the term for this is post-traumatic headache," she says.

"When we talk about migraine ... they're the same multitude of symptoms that can occur in concussion.

"So you can be dizzy and clouded in your thinking, lethargic and have double vision. And we know that women are at three times the risk of chronic migraine than men."

Read the whole piece here

For a 2019 article titled “Australian research shows female athletes have a higher rate of concussion and a prolonged recovery time”, go here

 

Love - as understood by high school students 2013

God's first and only instinct is to love us

Modern Pieta by American Conrad Albrizio, who died in 1973

God’s first and only instinct is to love us and for us to experience that love. We have been made by Him and for Him. He made us to enjoy His love and His life for ever.

What about sin? Judgment does not come from God but rather from our own choice. It is not God who dumps us; it is we who abandon Him.

It is not God’s judgment that we are to fear. Rather it is our own choices because they can bring us closer to Him or push us away from Him. It is our own choice to live in integrity and wholeness or not.

But it is the living in a world of love that is most important. The Father gives us His Son (John 3:16) and the Son gives us the Spirit, allowing us to share in their community of love. We become a new creation so that we know the inner peace and radiant joy of the new life lived in the power and love of the risen Jesus. (Easter is still fresh in mind and heart, giving rise to this reflection.)

Iraneus in the second century left us with this insight: “The glory of God is the human being fully alive”. The excitement of looking to serve God, to enter into a personal relationship with the God who somehow created everything that is essential in our lives, allows us to avoid being dazzled by the world’s accomplishments, instead seeing that there are more important elements of the human experience.

Everything in life falls into harmonious place when we align our lives to the God-given order, which allows us to work with grace in creating a better version of ourselves. Paul saw that in part the process entailed this: “Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable — if anything is excellent or praiseworthy — think about such things” (Letter to the Philippians 4:8).

Truth. “Whatever is true” — in the absolute sense — is the key! “The truth will make you free” (John 8:31), and that is the whole point of what has been passed down to us by those who have had to withstand times of martyrdom and persecution to do so: “I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete” (John 15:11). The joy comes through being on the right path — “I am the Way” — for human thriving.

Peace can be found in this life, even when difficulties threaten to overwhelm us. “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid” (John 14:27).

A peaceful heart and mind germinate from two gifts of God: “My kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36), and “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full” (John 10:10).

When we believe deeply that God is God, and I’m not, we can willingly enter into the relationship that God offers us with tremendous love and supreme mercy.

See also 

Jesus is God intent on sharing love in word and action

Jesus had a night-time dialogue with the Pharisee Nicodemus (John 3).  Nicodemus, while accepting in principle what Jesus has said about being born again in the Spirit, now wants to know how it can be brought about.

Jesus accuses Nicodemus and his fellow leaders of a lack of spiritual insight and a refusal to accept his testimony as coming directly from God.  “If you do not believe when I tell you about earthly things, how are you to believe when I tell you about those of heaven?”

Jesus does not speak simply on his own initiative.  He speaks of what he shares with the Father.  It is the Father’s words and teaching that he passes on to us – he is the Word of God.  His is not just a speaking Word; it brings all things from nothing, calls the dead to life, hands on the Spirit, the source of unending life, and makes us all children of God.  To experience all this we need to have faith in Jesus as truly the Word of God and to live our lives in love.

But the Word is not always easy to understand and it requires, above all, an openness to be received.  It is this openness that Jesus is challenging Nicodemus to have.  People respond to the Word in so many ways.  Some believe fully, others go away disappointed in spite of the many signs.  One is reminded of the parable of the sower (Mt 13:1-23).  To which ground-group do I belong?

And, up to now, only the Son has been “in heaven”, that is, with God.  (“In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God…”).  It is from there that he has come and “pitched his tent among us”.  He is in a position, therefore, to speak about the “things of heaven”, that is, to speak of everything that pertains to and comes from God.

The only solution is to put all our focus on Jesus.  “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that all who believe may have eternal life in him.”  This is a reminder of the incident in the book of Numbers where, as a punishment for their sins, the Israelites were attacked by serpents.  God told Moses to erect a bronze serpent on a pole and all who looked at the serpent were saved.

Jesus, in a much greater way, will also be “lifted up” both on the cross and into the glory of his Father through the Resurrection and Ascension.  And he will be a source of life to all who commit themselves totally to him.

To what extent are we “looking at” Jesus? Is he the centre of our attention in all that we do and say?

Let our constant prayer be: “Lord, grant that all my thoughts, words and actions be directed solely to your love and service this and every day.”

Reflection for Tuesday of the Second Week of Easter

By Fr Frank Doyle SJ, Living Space: https://livingspace.sacredspace.ie/e1023g/

Together in reshaping society after virus meltdown

 Poverty soars as virus exposes our collective frailty. Photo source: World Bank

The coronavirus pandemic has the potential to lead to an increase in inequality in almost every country at once, the first time this has happened since records began. The virus has exposed, fed off and increased existing inequalities of wealth, gender and race. Over two million people have died, and hundreds of millions of people are being forced into poverty while many of the richest – individuals and corporations – are thriving. Billionaire fortunes returned to their pre-pandemic highs in just nine months, while recovery for the world’s poorest people could take over a decade. The crisis has exposed our collective frailty and the inability of our deeply unequal economy to work for all. Yet it has also shown us the vital importance of government action to protect our health and livelihoods. Trans-formative policies that seemed unthinkable before the crisis have suddenly been shown to be possible. There can be no return to where we were before. Instead, citizens and governments must act on the urgency to create a more equal and sustainable world.                                                                – Oxfam Briefing Paper, January 2021

Christian leaders have been making the same point as this British aid organization. The overall message is that the global human society cannot just go back to the way things were before the COVID-19 virus exploded in our midst. These leaders are putting the world’s elite on the spot, just as much as they are challenging ordinary people to grasp the opportunity to push for an end to unjust systems in all societies, and especially accept changes that ensure protection of the poor, and of the planet as well.

As recently as last Sunday, Pope Francis had this message for all people of good will:

Now, while we are looking forward to a slow and arduous recovery from the pandemic, there is a danger that we will forget those who are left behind. The risk is that we may then be struck by an even worse virus, that of selfish indifference. A virus spread by the thought that life is better if it is better for me, and that everything will be fine if it is fine for me. It begins there and ends up selecting one person over another, discarding the poor, and sacrificing those left behind on the altar of progress.

The present pandemic, however, reminds us that there are no differences or borders between those who suffer. We are all frail, all equal, all precious. May we be profoundly shaken by what is happening all around us: the time has come to eliminate inequalities, to heal the injustice that is undermining the health of the entire human family! Let us learn from the early Christian community described in the Acts of the Apostles. It received mercy and lived with mercy: “All who believed were together and had all things in common; and they sold their possessions and goods and distributed them to all, as any had need” (Acts 2:44-45). This is not some ideology: it is Christianity.

With that last sentence Francis is saying it is not communism to share, that solidarity is at the heart of Christian life and our relationship is as a family facing God, who we call “our Father” for good reason. Francis dwells on this point:

[…] a small part of the human family has moved ahead, while the majority has remained behind. Each of us could say: “These are complex problems, it is not my job to take care of the needy, others have to be concerned with it!”.

[…] To everyone: let us not think only of our interests, our vested interests. Let us welcome this time of trial as an opportunity to prepare for our collective future. Because without an all-embracing vision, there will be no future for anyone.

His final plea is this: “Let us show mercy to those who are most vulnerable; for only in this way will we build a new world.”

Such strong words about the need to act now to create a truly human society, to have that “new world” arise from a global community that was already ill even before the virus overwhelmed the lives of so many families, are no flash in the pan for Francis. He has produced two encyclicals (letters) that plead for attention to the global environment and the economic systems that impact it – 2015’s Laudato Si’ (Praise…); and 2020’s Fratelli tutti (subtitled "on fraternity and social friendship").

Again recently, Pope Francis used his traditional Easter Urbi et Orbi (City and World) message to declare his solidarity for those who are the least in society, urging practical steps to bring the multitudes – including many in the middle class in developed countries – back from the brink of enslavement within a revived “normal”:

The Easter message [Jesus’ death but also resurrection] does not offer us a mirage or reveal a magic formula. It does not point to an escape from the difficult situation we are experiencing. The pandemic is still spreading, while the social and economic crisis remains severe, especially for the poor.

The crucified and risen Lord is comfort for those who have lost their jobs or experience serious economic difficulties and lack adequate social protection. May he inspire public authorities to act so that everyone, especially families in greatest need, will be offered the assistance needed for a decent standard of living. Sadly, the pandemic has dramatically increased the number of the poor and the despair of thousands of people.

                                                                                     Photo source: World Bank

Practical steps that the pope might have in mind are offered in a letter that the Vatican presented to the spring meeting of the World Bank Group and the International Monetary Fund, held online last week.

The pope told the members and advisers of these powerful groups:

It is my hope that your discussions will contribute to a model of “recovery” capable of generating new, more inclusive and sustainable solutions to support the real economy, assisting individuals and communities to achieve their deepest aspirations and the universal common good.

The notion of recovery cannot be content to a return to an unequal and unsustainable model of economic and social life, where a tiny minority of the world’s population owns half of its wealth.

For all our deeply-held convictions that all men and women are created equal, many of our brothers and sisters in the human family, especially those at the margins of society, are effectively excluded from the financial world.  The pandemic, however, has reminded us once again that no one is saved alone.  If we are to come out of this situation as a better, more humane and solidary world, new and creative forms of social, political and economic participation must be devised, sensitive to the voice of the poor and committed to including them in the building of our common future (cf. Fratelli Tutti, 169).

As experts in finance and economics, you know well that trust, born of the interconnectedness between people, is the cornerstone of all relationships, including financial relationships.  Those relationships can only be built up through the development of a “culture of encounter” in which every voice can be heard and all can thrive, finding points of contact, building bridges, and envisioning long-term inclusive projects (cf. ibid., 216).

A spirit of global solidarity also demands at the least a significant reduction in the debt burden of the poorest nations, which has been exacerbated by the pandemic.  Relieving the burden of debt of so many countries and communities today, is a profoundly human gesture that can help people to develop, to have access to vaccines, health, education and jobs.

The pope also raised the matter of “the ‘ecological debt’ that exists especially between the global north and south”, where, having despoiled their own lands, rich nations suck resources from the developing nations, often with catastrophic consequences for the local people. In effect, he says: “Experts, use your brains to work out ways to right this injustice”. He suggests that it was up to developed nations to pay this debt:

…not only by significantly limiting their consumption of non-renewable energy or by assisting poorer countries to enact policies and programmes of sustainable development, but also by covering the costs of the innovation required for that purpose.

The importance of focusing on achieving the common good gets much of the pope’s attention:

Central to a just and integrated development is a profound appreciation of the essential objective and end of all economic life, namely the universal common good.  It follows that public money may never be disjoined from the public good, and financial markets should be underpinned by laws and regulations aimed at ensuring that they truly work for the common good.

 A commitment to economic, financial and social solidarity thus entails much more than engaging in sporadic acts of generosity.  “It means thinking and acting in terms of community.  It means that the lives of all are prior to the appropriation of goods by a few.  It also means combatting the structural causes of poverty, inequality, the lack of work, land and housing, the denial of social and labour rights… Solidarity, understood in its most profound meaning, is a way of making history” (Fratelli Tutti, 116).

Also, in light of the 2008 financial crisis and subsequent concern that the likes of banks and hedge funds are gambling with other people’s money, it is not surprising that Francis highlights the need for thorough reform in these fields:

It is time to acknowledge that markets – particularly the financial ones – do not govern themselves. Markets need to be underpinned by laws and regulations that ensure they work for the common good, guaranteeing that finance – rather than being merely speculative or self-financing – works for the societal goals so much needed during the present global healthcare emergency.

Finally, Pope Francis expresses a heartfelt wish:

It is my hope that in these days your formal deliberations and your personal encounters will bear much fruit for the discernment of wise solutions for a more inclusive and sustainable future.  [This is] a future where finance is at the service of the common good, where the vulnerable and the marginalized are placed at the centre, and where the earth, our common home, is well cared for.

In future posts, attention will be given to what other religious leaders are considering as crucial as countries undertake the challenge of reshaping their societies so that what was harmful though “normal” – such as gross inequality – no longer takes pride of place, instead the starting point being allocated to the common good. 

Did we "unlearn" how to create enchantment in life?

Has something profound been lost in the society we have let develop? Watch and listen to this animated short film created by award-winning filmmaker Emily Downe.

 

Social media link to girls' transgender rate needs study

           From the video What do DETRANSITIONED WOMEN think of SOCIAL MEDIA? on the              YouTube channel Pique Resilience Project

The impact of social media on all our lives is just beginning to be realised – as with the scrutiny the tech giants are facing from lawmakers in the United States and Europe. But of concern, too, is whether girls  in particular are being harmed by social media through bearing additional forms of social pressure, forms that are much stronger than that which young people have typically had to deal with.

A new first-person account of how a troubled British teenager was handled by the National Health Service highlights some startling UK statistics. Kiera Bell, who went through a transitioning programme from girl to boy, writes:

Notably, a growing wave of girls has been seeking treatment for gender dysphoria. In 2009-10, 77 children were referred to the [National Health Service’s] Gender Identity Development Service, 52% of whom were boys. That ratio started to reverse a few years later as the overall number of referrals soared. In England in 2018-19, 624 boys were referred and 1,740 girls, or 74% of the total. Over half of referrals were for those aged 14 or under; some were as young as 3 years old. The court noted the practitioners at the Tavistock did not put forward “any clinical explanation” for the dramatic rise in girls…

Kiera Bell after her court victory

The reference to the Tavistock centre needs explanation. Bell, who is from a broken family, came to believe she would be happier as a boy. She was referred to the Tavistock clinic. The clinic’s practitioners acceded to her demands with little counselling, a matter that led her to take it to court for a judicial review of her treatment while a teenager, especially relating to her ability to give informed consent over the serious actions taken that would affect her later life. All the way through she had wanted to transition, even having a double mastectomy as a 20-year-old.

However, there came a point where she knew that she had made a big mistake: “As I matured, I recognized that gender dysphoria was a symptom of my overall misery, not its cause.”

Bell, who has subsequently detransitioned, won her case against the clinic, with the judges ruling that youths under treatment at the centre could not meaningfully consent to the medical interventions recommended.

Last year, another set of figures were published in the United States by Abigail Shrier, who is concerned about the impact of social pressure on girls with regards their self-esteem. She writes:

In America and across the Western world, adolescents were reporting a sudden spike in gender dysphoria—the medical condition associated with the social designation “transgender.” Between 2016 and 2017, the number of gender surgeries for natal females in the United States quadrupled, with biological women suddenly accounting for—as we have seen—70 percent of all gender surgeries. In 2018, the UK reported a 4,400 percent rise over the previous decade in teenage girls seeking gender treatments. In Canada, Sweden, Finland, and the UK, clinicians and gender therapists began reporting a sudden and dramatic shift in the demographics of those presenting with gender dysphoria—from predominately preschool-aged boys to predominately adolescent girls.

Clusters of cases among friends, and the existence of trendy sites on Tumblr and Reddit, point to the need of all platforms to send a message about social media literacy to young people as Tumblr did in 2012 when there was a flareup of self-harm linked to material in posts it was hosting. That message is at “A New Policy Against Self-Harm Blogs”,  here and here .

Researchers are exploring the role of “social contagion” among young people. Findings will be of great value to parents who suffer when surprised by statements about sexuality arising from a child “out of the blue”. 

This is how Dr Lisa Littman, the Brown University researcher who introduced to this field of study the term “Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria”, describes how her work encapsulating social media is helping understand the unique and rapid phenomenon that we see in the transgender "explosion", in which greater social acceptance can only be just part of the underlying set of causes. Dr Littman said in an interview:

This research explores, through the reports of parents, a phenomenon whereby teens and young adults who did not exhibit childhood signs of gender issues appeared to suddenly identify as transgender. This new identification seemed to occur in the context of either belonging to a group of friends [in which] multiple—or even all—members became transgender-identified around the same time, or through immersion in social media, or both. The findings of the research support the hypotheses that what I have described could represent a new type of gender dysphoria (referred to as Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria; that, for some teens and young adults, their gender dysphoria might represent a maladaptive coping mechanism; and that peer and social influences might contribute to the development of gender dysphoria. More research will need to be done to confirm or refute these hypotheses.

Is God merely a person’s subjective projection?

Good and evil angels struggling for possession of a child - William Blake 

How do you respond to the skeptic who says that God is merely a subjective projection? was a question asked of professor Tanya Luhrmann of Stanford University, where she teaches anthropology and psychology, when she took part in a video discussion on the publication last year of her book How God Becomes Real.

She started her answer by affirming that her research did not aim to prove the existence of God, but it “reveals how people learn to experience [their] God more vividly”. In this she seemed at pains to espouse an impartial or objective viewpoint:

“Whatever social science can say about [God] is perfectly compatible with the view that God is nothing more than the way that humans imagine this invisible being.

“But it is not incompatible with the question whether an external presence can be made more vividly present in an ordinary human’s life.”

Her research goal was to “get to the core of this human experience of interacting with invisible others”.

 As my previous post illustrates, Luhrmann found that people used their imagination extensively to “interact with invisible others”.  She states that this might be frowned upon in the rationalistic, materialistic West, but that that experience is more natural  where our "inner and outer senses" have not been corrupted (my word) by the governing mentality of “seeing is believing”.

In preparation for your look at Luhrmann’s ideas in the following post I provide here two samples relating how Christians have traditionally used their imaginations to pray.  The texts refer to the insights of Ignatius of Loyola, who founded the Jesuit order of priests and brothers in 1534.

The first description of the Ignatian style of prayer comes from Grace Institute of Luther College, Iowa:  

Ignatian Contemplation is prayer with Scripture. It is meeting God through story. The prayer develops as you “live into” a Scripture story with all your senses and imagination. You become a participant in the story, and you continue in the story in your heart, mind, imagination, spirit and body after the reading ends. You let the Spirit guide the prayer - you don’t force anything to happen - you let it happen to you, within you, around you. You may pray with the same story for many days in a row before you feel the prayer is complete, that God has spoken to you, that you have heard God, and worked through what it means for you. It is a wonderful, rich experience.

Ignatian Contemplation is a prayer form developed by Ignatius of Loyola in the 1500s to help people come to know Jesus through imaginative interaction with Scripture. Through the story God meets and interacts with each listener personally and differently. That interaction of our spirit with God is prayer. The difficult part of the process is relaxing into it and letting God be in control, rather than trying to force your response or reaction.

Second, the Ignatian Spirituality website has this description of how to pray using the imagination:

Put yourself in a Gospel story.

Just choose which character you’re going to be, and walk right into the scene where Jesus heals someone, delivers a teaching, or feeds thousands. You can be a main character in the story, or you can be a bystander or friend that you simply invent for this prayer. Don’t get distracted by trying to be historically accurate—this is not about you interpreting Scripture in a scholarly way. The point is to encounter Jesus. Ask the Holy Spirit to guide this very spiritual function, the human imagination, to where you need to go.

Pray as though you are having a conversation across the dinner table or in your living room.

In the Spiritual Exercises, this is called a colloquy, but it’s just conversational prayer. You speak to Jesus as you would a close friend. You speak to Mary, his mother, or to God the Father/Creator, or to the Holy Spirit who is comforter, or to one of the saints, who can be part of this conversation with the Divine. Sometimes, when we pray the way we talk, it can enable us to be more honest. Probably the only danger is that we become flippant or casual, but this isn’t much of a temptation when we remember who it is we’re talking to.

Finally, as a general matter of interest, here is a snippet of information about Ignatius of Loyola from History.com:

The Jesuit movement was founded by Ignatius de Loyola, a Spanish soldier turned priest, in August 1534, with 6 companions. The Jesuits have 16,000 priests and brothers and in training.

Under Ignatius’ charismatic leadership, the Society of Jesus grew quickly. Jesuit missionaries played a leading role in the Counter-Reformation and won back many of the European faithful who had been lost to Protestantism. In Ignatius’ lifetime, Jesuits were also dispatched to India, Brazil, the Congo region, and Ethiopia.

Education was of utmost importance to the Jesuits, and this has been especially true in the United States with several universities established. When Ignatius de Loyola died in July 1556, there were more than 1,000 Jesuit priests.

Another view of the man, who might be regarded as an unlikely promoter of imaginative prayer: 

St. Ignatius of Loyola’s passion to become a dashing courtier, a courageous and celebrated soldier, and an advisor to royalty became, under the influence of grace, a passion to serve Christ—all the way, holding nothing back.

He effected this influence first through the establishment of the Jesuit order, which even in Ignatius’ lifetime had become a powerful force in Europe and beyond and which today spans the globe; and second, through his masterpiece the Spiritual Exercises, which for the past five centuries has taught people how to commune with God and to find true freedom. (Word on Fire.org)

Of course, the use of art and the outpouring of creativity have been notable features of religion throughout history, as part of the "human experience of interacting with invisible others". This continues with the practice of sharing uplifting photo and quote cards on Facebook and the like. 

William Blake used the image of a tiger to explore the power of God:

Tiger, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
To see the world in a grain of sand,
And to see heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hands,
And eternity in an hour.
If the doors of perception were cleansed
Everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.

LitCharts has this to say about the poem and introduces the artist Blake:

The Tyger is a poem by visionary English poet William Blake, and is often said to be the most widely anthologized poem in the English language. ... At the same time, however, the poem is an expression of marvel and wonder at the tiger and its fearsome power, and by extension the power of both nature and God.