Manifesto

Still thinking about "what I should have/could have said" last week.

Where do you begin to answer when someone questions the way you live?  When it is obvious that you are religious because the number of children piling out of your large vehicle make it look like a clown car - or perhaps because of the way you dress, your necklace laden with saint medals instead of charms, the fact that you never use the "f" word, your tendency to reply you are "busy" when invited to do something on Sundays, at some point you are going to be asked why. Why live this way?

I don't think I could articulate the answer to that briefly. I'm always left without words when my faith is challenged.  Where to start?  How to articulate why and what I believe to someone with preconceptions about what faith is?  I think I need to write my own manifesto of faith.

As I mentioned in my last post, when challenged about my beliefs and choices, my first response is to defend.  I'm tempted to mount an argument; I feel belligerent.  I want to turn to statistics and experts and studies to prove that I am right.  But that attitude and those "scientific" responses aren't really convincing. They only invoke a similar reply from the questioner - I want to write "the opposition," "the adversary," "the opponent."  But even thinking in those terms belies a flaw in that approach.

I've started to think the only way to begin is by offering an apology. It might actually be kind of funny to say, "I'm sorry my children/appearance/actions make you uncomfortable with your life choices," but of course I mean an apology in the sense of an explanation.

Only again, where to begin?  Beginning with a defense of NFP doesn't really work if someone doesn't have faith.  You might be able to pique people's curiosity in it by showing how it is all natural and organic, but without a deeper understanding of sacrifice, many people might say no thanks.

Why make sacrifices?

Why give up something you enjoy, comfort, normalcy?  Why choose something hard?  The simple, seemingly trite, answer comes down to love. When you love someone, you want to do things for them. You want them to be happy. You are happy. You want to spread happiness to the world. Love pours itself out.  Love multiplies. When you are in love with one person, loving a multitude is easier.  Love is really the only thing that makes life worth living. Love naturally seeks to replicate itself. Love others, love the world, love the possibilities of others and the world.

And love the Source of all these beloveds.

Because I grew up in a home where faith was central, I have always thought it was important to love others because that is the way you love God.  But when I made my faith my own and began to ask why love God, I was convinced to do so, not just from arguments I learned in theology class, or from Scriptures that I heard at Mass, or from the witness of others, although all those things strengthened my faith, but also because of the fact that love - and lovable things - exist.  People, Truth, Beauty, Metaphysical Desires.

So whether you believe in a loving God because you love others or whether you love others because you believe in a loving God, you begin to build your life around that belief and your choices about how to live flow from a desire to create more Love and keep Love alive and growing.

So that is why we do NFP.

And why I believe in God and in the Church and what the Church teaches.  And why I agree with the teaching that family life is a path to sanctification because it is where love is conceived and nurtured and challenged and made stronger. And I want sanctification because I desire the Divine encounter face to face.  And when we come face to face with others we sense God and ourselves in them.  And we learn to live and to love others face to face in the family.  And I believe in Heaven because I believe the world is a beautiful place, and yet it isn't home, and we long for a home, and we feel a connection with those who have died, and a longing for immortality.  And I agree with Pascal that I can either wager that God exists or that he doesn't, to believe or not to believe. And if I believe and Heaven doesn't exist, no harm, but if I don't believe, and Heaven does exist, than I may be looking at eternal absence or Hell.

I don't think it is because of a weakness of faith that I come back to the idea of a wager.  Every day we have to make choices that are based on a belief, or a bet, that the outcome will be what we expect and hope, but we really don't know.  So I bet on the existence of eternal happiness.  I choose to believe in an immortal soul in each person which makes each person a child of God and my brother or sister.

And my relationship to my brother or sister, even when they annoy me, is predicated upon love.
I choose to believe that my siblings, my children, my spouse, my neighbor, and myself are created in an act of love, out of the overflowing love of the Creator, so they deserve honor and respect.
And all that is good exists because of that outpouring of Love from the Creator. So the world itself is predicated upon love.
And the creative instinct is the effect of being created in the image of God.
All that is beautiful is a reflection of that Imagery.
Beautiful things open our hearts to Love and lead us back to it and multiply it within us.
A baby is a a beautiful thing.
Life, though difficult, is a beautiful thing.
Love, though capable of causing great pain, is also the source of great happiness, a beautiful thing.
Because love requires suffering for and with others, it isn't easy to practice.  It isn't easy to witness to the joy that family life can bring. It isn't always easy to remember that in our interactions with our family.
Not everyone, especially me, is easy to love. It is hard to love some people where they are, perhaps especially the people closest to us when they don't behave how we expect or desire.  We want them to love us as we are and to understand, comfort, congratulate us, but we don't always have the grace to give them the same gifts.

If a friend questions why I do something unconventionally, I don't need to create a sophisticated defense for why we practice living our faith; instead I need to learn how to live so that every action tells the story of our life in the faith.  I need to practice enshrining Love into our family because we may act in ways that are unloving sometimes,  often. We complain about hardships and disappointments. We hear about the hardships and disappointments of others. We fail Love constantly.

Confession, reconciliation, redemption.  Best storyline ever.

I am not a theologian or a poet.  But I trust that both of those visionaries have insight into immortality and the love that makes it possible.  If I had more time, I'm sure I could find a poem that expresses all this jumble more eloquently.   Perhaps that should be my quick answer to "Why?"  -- a poem that expresses the idea that Love of and for others and of and for God liberates, redeems, creates all the beauty that makes life worth living.


Or maybe a picture. A couple old ones: