In the beginning both will feel unnatural

“I’m not the type for this kind of thing.”

“I’m not cut out for this.”

“This isn’t working for me.”

Remember, our physical muscles are flabby in the beginning and making demands on them can be unpleasant,

So too, our “spiritual muscles” are flabby in the beginning, as we have lost the instinct for finding and loving our Creator.  It takes time, patience, and practice.

      and

We will use the same excuses to avoid doing them

“I’m too tired!”

“I don’t have time!”

“I have more important things to do right now.”

“It’s a great idea, but later, another time….”

Duration: 58 minutes
Audience: Any

Transcript:

Surely there is much to admire, and even envy, in the man or woman who is born and raised within the cozy cocoon of a secure religious faith, who never doubts the belief system he or she has been taught and then lived in the community, and who lives a life full of comfortable conviction and sense of divine purpose.

For them, the big questions are answered, and life is fairly straightforward.

For many of us, it is not so easy.

Having been raised in a family without any religion whatsoever, my search for truth did not start with a fixed standard, and I find there are always new ways of looking at a question, new ways to examine each new experience.

In our modern culture, atheism is becoming increasingly popular, and in fact is the norm in many circles.   Ironically, whereas one used to criticize a religious person for passively accepting the faith they were taught, often it is now the atheist who has absorbed ideas from friends or the culture in general, and accepts them without reflection.

We should not be so easy on ourselves.

Unfortunately, the very idea of standing firm on any position and declaring it as “true,” is considered antiquated, even in bad taste.  Now we just have opinions, and mine is as good as yours.  We have become so tolerant of every view, that no position is worth defending, no truth worth promoting.  In fact, the very idea of “truth” is often dismissed.

This reflection is for those who have not yet gone that far down the slippery slope of relativism.   It is for those who think atheism is, or might be, true, and not just convenient.    There is no doubt that many hold religious views primarily because they are “just convenient.”  They too need to be challenged.

Is atheism true?  A part of me wants this to be so.

Does not each one of us, at various times in our lives, wish there was no God?  Do we not wish to be free from any power or purpose that demands a response, that imposes a set of moral values, that makes us accountable to something and/or someone outside of ourselves?  Are we not correct that being haunted by feelings of guilt and obligation, which are so often associated with religious commitment, are at cross purposes with our innate drive for happiness?  And does not the all too frequent violence of those who hold religious beliefs, as well as the chaos of their doctrines, undermine their credibility, or at least their attractiveness, as a source of ultimate truth?

However, is it not equally true that we sometimes yearn for a deeper purpose to our experiences, for a clear understanding of who we are and why we are here?   For a sense of belonging to a stable belief system, for at least a sense of context for what we experience?  Are we not sometimes envious of those who live wrapped in a sense of loving protection or guidance from a higher power?   Does our heart not ache to give thanks, to someone or something, for the wonders and the beauty of this world?

For the purposes of this examination, the question at hand is whether atheism is true, as opposed to a theistic view.  Doctrines according to a particular religion or denomination or sect are not part of this consideration.  Stated most simply: A theist believes that a transcendent force or divine person created the universe, including man, and that the universe therefore has a direction and a purpose.  The atheistic view would hold that the universe does not have any transcendent creator or purpose, but is governed strictly by material forces.  It has sometimes been termed “scientific materialism.”

I realize many, if not most people prefer to adopt what could be called “atheism-lite”: rejecting any religious system and the existence of a personal God, but aware there are sometimes spiritual components to reality, without being able to explain them.  Similarly, there are those who adopt “theism-lite”: accepting the warm and fuzzy comfort of living in a religious system with clear values and purpose, without really wanting to explore the demands and consequences that such a belief system might entail.   Rather interestingly, these two camps are very similar – they both want the convenience of a belief system that does not make demands on them.

If our interest is seeking and finding a truth that is defensible and consistent, I do not see how “atheism-lite” is a viable option (or “theism-lite” for that matter), partly because it does not even try to be consistent, and partly because it leaves the door wide open to at least some form of theism.  Any non-material reality allowed inside the atheistic system is easily re-named as “spiritual,” or “god’s action,” and the moment that is allowed, atheism as a coherent belief system collapses.  There cannot be even a little bit of God, even if abstract and remote, in an atheistic belief system.

From the outset it must be acknowledged that how we approach and resolve these questions is likely determined by our upbringing and our cultural environment.   If we have been raised in a positive religious environment, we are very likely to embrace a religious view.   If raised in a secular, or negative religious environment, an atheist position will likely seem most reasonable.   It should be remembered that it cuts both ways:  Atheists tend to be condescending and dismissive of religious arguments, while people of faith tend to assume atheistic arguments are shallow and self-serving.

Where does this leave us?   Can we ever shed our cultural bias and the presumptions of our upbringing?

The short answer is, alas, no.  But we can be more aware of our biases, and more mistrustful of our first reactions when presented with a different view.   Hopefully, we make an effort to be more objective, and keep as our goal to find and live the truth about reality, and not just defend our intellectual or emotional turf.

My most recent, and certainly one of my most concerted efforts to embrace atheism occurred when my teenage son declared himself to be an atheist, despite attending a strongly Catholic college.  To his credit, he said he reached this conclusion “because it is true.”

Little did he know that his announcement would set off an exploration, spanning well over a year, in which I decided to reflect on atheism more seriously, in fact to give it the benefit of the doubt, and to basically assume my son was right.  I would put all religious and theistic views on the defensive, I would start with a bias against all the Christian views that still permeate our Western culture, and see where it led me.

My own journey would take me around the world, to explore other religious traditions, and include reading hundreds of books to see where truth could be unearthed.

Of course I had to read the “new atheists,” so I read a dozen books by Christopher Hitchins, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett.

And since science had supposedly debunked many of the myths of religion, I read books by Steven Hawking, Charles Darwin, David Davies, Lawrence Krauss, Thomas Kuhn, William James, Lisa Randall, Paul Robbins, and others.

Or could the truth be clarified by reading non-Christian philosphers?  So I read Frederik Nietzsche, Jean-Jacque Rousseau, Plato, Niccolo Machiavelli, John Stuart Mill, Sigmund Freud, and others.

And seeing how great men and women of history had lived was important to see how they handled the questions of truth and religion.  So I read biographies of  Albert Einstein, Thomas Jefferson, Napoleon Bonaparte, Genghis Khan, Catherine the Great, Galileo, Adolf Hitler, Abraham Lincoln, and George Washington, among others.

Or did the great classics hold a key to a more balanced and wise insight into reality that did not include a theistic view? So I read books by James Joyce, Albert Camus, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Herman Hesse, Marcel Proust, Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, Charles Dickens, Franz Kaftka, Thomas Mann, William Faulkner, Aldous Huxley, Voltaire, John Steinbeck, Joseph Conrad, Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Gustave Flaubert, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and others.

Or did other religions outside of Christianity hold truths not often considered in the West?  So I read numerous books on Islam, including the entire Koran.  I read the Old Testament cover to cover, as well as the 13 Principal Upanishads.   I read books by the Dalai Lama, and books on Hinduism and Buddism and Taoism and Judaism, as well as The Tibetan Book of the Dead.

In total I read over 260 books, and am still reading.  While it may seem like a prodigious list, reading so much only shows me how little I have covered, and how vast is the territory to uncover.  My travels and reading have not been remotely comprehensive, but it is a start.  It is an attempt to reach into the deposit of the world’s wisdom, and see if atheism makes sense.  I urge you to make your own intellectual journey.

What follows are the stumbling blocks I kept coming up against, as I tried to make atheism “work.”

#1  Free Will

If the universe is nothing but materialistic forces impinging upon one another, I am unable to see how anything like free will can truly exist.   Picture the vast expanse of the atoms of the universe as billiard balls, ricocheting off one another in various patterns.   The direction and velocity of each ball is determined by the direction and force of the balls acting up it, which, in turn are behaving in their pattern due to previous forces acting upon them…all the way back to the origin of the universe.  Everything must be determined by mechanical forces.  Humans are staggeringly complex, but we became so through natural forces of evolution, which is based on random, natural selection.   Our brains appear to generate free thoughts, but in fact they are the firing of neurons caused by purely physical forces.  In other words, if we were smart enough and could see the pattern of forces that brought any one of us to this exact moment, and even to each thought, we could predict our next thought and our next action based on what had gone before.  There simply is no room for authentic free will in a mechanistic universe.

Daniel Dennett was honest enough to admit that we must “pretend” to have free will.  Indeed we do, and indeed we must, as otherwise virtues like honesty, integrity, love, truth, hope and every other abstract value that humans treasure, lose their meaning.  And the idea of true artistic creativity and inspiration is dead as well.

Of course using the billiard ball analogy is a gross simplification, especially given the new discoveries in the mysterious and quirky world of quantum mechanics.   But increased complexity and indeterminacy, does not change the basic premise – free will can only be an illusion in a mechanistic universe.   Also, the more I read about quantum mechanics, the more it lead me to conclude the universe has a playful and creative author, rather than the opposite, so the advances in physics at the quantum level seem to lead one towards theism rather than away from it.

I can only conclude, as an honest atheist, that free will is a complete illusion.

#2 Moral Standards / Universals / Value Judgments

Free will is mentioned first because its loss has far reaching consequences.  First among them is the loss of our status as moral agents.   If I am doing what I do because I have to, based on material forces acting upon me, no matter how complex, then my apparent decisions are really not independent choices, and they thereby lose all moral weight.   I cannot be blamed or praised for what I do, nor can I condemn the actions of anyone else.  Machines, after all, cannot be saints or sinners.

We are left in the same position as with free will – we basically have to “pretend” that right and wrong exists.  In order to avoid anarchy and chaos, we must impose some set of values on ourselves and others.   And we will tend to justify this by saying that evolution created complex beings that need codes of behavior in order to help preserve our species.

But is not the idea of “preserving the species” a moral value in itself?  We take it so for granted, but should not.  Those ricocheting billiard balls cannot desire a certain combination, there is no constellation of billiards that can be deemed “worth preserving.”   It may take real effort to shed our instinctive assumptions of value to see this, but it seems to me to be essential to being a consistent atheist.   Animal life, human life, cosmic dust, or empty space are all equal in an atheistic universe.  Whether a flow of atoms is at one instant the sexual abuse of a young child or, at another instant, the soaring song of a choir boy in a cathedral – it is still just a flow of atoms.  There is no basis to make a moral calculation in favor of one over the other.

Yes, as an atheist I can just decide that some moral values are a good idea.  Or I can just decide that evolution somehow created moral codes and we need to respect the ones our particular society developed.   But what I am really saying is that, like free will, I am just pretending in order to get along.  Further, whatever “code” I have chosen to live by cannot be binding, for me or society, as going forward evolutionary development could take it in an entirely new direction at any time.  All action is descriptive, not prescriptive.  And this means a government could impose its own idea of right action with impunity, and, on a personal level, nothing prevents me from changing or jettisoning my own moral code as my mood and situation demands.  And indeed, I find myself tempted to do this all the time.

Ironically, saying we have no basis for affirming the importance of life, of self-preservation, also means we can’t do the opposite, and maintain our life on earth is unimportant.  Take the very common, condescending view of our planet, well conveyed in a quote from Stephen Hawking:

“The human race is just a chemical scum on a moderate-sized planet, orbiting around a very average star in the outer suburb of one among a hundred billion galaxies. We are so insignificant that I can’t believe the whole universe exists for our benefit.”

Note how the statement is loaded with judgment words: ”scum”, “moderate”, “average”, ”insignificant”, “benefit,” and “believe”.  First, I did not know that theists believe that the universe exists only for our benefit, but thought it was an act of a Creator with his/her own purposes, many mysterious, but which include man.  And I am not sure how being the only planet with life in the observed universe makes us less important rather than more important (it would seem to me the other way around), but my problem is at a deeper level.

As an atheist, I cannot make any judgment about this universe.  It is as inappropriate to say humans are insignificant as to say they are central.   If I am a consistent atheist I can only affirm what can be materially observed, and make no further judgments.  But atheism leaves me in a quandry, for how do I even maintain the sweeping judgment that atheism is  really “true”?  Truth only has meaning if we admit to a lasting standard, a value we believe is important, which transcends ourselves.

I can only conclude, as an honest atheist, that moral standards and all value judgements are arbitrary and ultimately meaningless.

#3  Laws of  Nature

As an atheist I must believe that the universe is without a cause and without a purpose.   Creation develops because of natural forces that generate the diversity we see, with scientific laws of nature governing the direction of change.   When it comes to life forms, natural selection determines the outcome, and any random genetic change that occurs that supports the continuation of an organism is likely to be perpetuated, while those that are harmful will be rejected.

These “laws” that drive the universe and the “laws” that allowed the development of life are very complex, very precise, and very steady.   They seem to apply to the entire known universe.   We take this so for granted it is nearly impossible to see what can only be described as miraculous.  Why would the behavior of an electron around an atom in my body behave the exact same way as it will on Mars, or in the sun, or in a distant galaxy, simultaneously, and across billions of years?  Why have the laws of nature that allowed life to form and develop been completely consistent the world over?   How could it be that the staggering energy and pattern of activity locked inside every single atom never slows down, going back billions of years to the creation of the universe?

It is indisputable that evolution of planets and of life took billions of years, and was incremental.  But complexity would increase only because there are these innumerable, interlocking laws of nature that do not change, do not run down, and do not vary from place to place, and which seem to work in concert to allow life to form and to complexify.   These laws had to exist from the instant the Big Bang occurred.   How can such orderly laws be embedded in the nature of a lawless, random universe?   Such immutable laws do not seem to remove the need for creator, a law-maker, but to suggest one.

Finally, these “laws” of nature seem to be what drives increased complexity and the creation of life, but as an atheist, I do not see how I can value complexity over simplicity.

As a consistent atheist, I cannot find an explanation for the laws of nature.

#4 Life

It could be predicted that the question of the origin of life would come up in this discussion.   But I hope to present a somewhat unique angle on the question.

We tend to have rather fuzzy thinking about the origins of life.  We imagine that it was so long ago, and took so long, that somehow it just “happened” – beginning very simply, in some kind of primordial pool.  And while the once popular theory – that amino acids, the building blocks of life, were zapped into existence when lightning traveled through a methane atmosphere — has been discredited, it seems only a matter of time before a more accurate theory is advanced and at least theoretically verified.

And as an atheist I would sneer at the absurd belief of the some theists, called creationists, who think God just snapped his fingers and a fish appeared that was gently placed in the sea, and then another snap of the divine fingers and a cow appears that was gently placed on land.

There are few creationists left, and most theists now agree that life has grown slowly, over time, following the laws of natural selection.  A point of agreement between theists and atheists!    But what would a theist say actually happened when life first appeared on earth?   Not a big flash and a big fish appears, but maybe a little flash and a little cluster of amino acids appear?    Forgive my teasing, but it seems to me that most theists and atheists should still agree – in the very beginning there was probably not anything magical or sudden – no flashes or snap of the divine fingers.

The truth is that neither side actually knows exactly how life first began.  Science appears to have routed any idea of a sudden creation of complex life, but it has not come any closer to explaining the ultimate source of life.

Let us consider a thought experiment.  Imagine we could place a video camera back in time to the period when life did in fact first begin.   OK, run the tape…

What would we see?

As mentioned above, let us assume no sudden flashes.  This is a triumph over the creationist, but not over the theist.  If you give it real thought, the gap between life and non life is just as enormous, regardless of the scale or the speed of its appearance.  You cannot create a few “building blocks” of life and then, somehow, those building blocks decide to coordinate, and remain in steady formation, and, most miraculous, “decide” to replicate.  And more miraculous, “decide” to replicate over and over in repeatable ways.  All without any plan or preference for life or order, which is a core belief of any respectable atheist.

If the absurdity is not clear, take it back to the atomic level, or level of billiard balls knocking against each other.   As an atheist, I have to believe that at some point an inanimate atom, or collection of many inanimate atoms (a totally random collection), “said” to another random collection of atoms, “let’s stay together in a hugely complex pattern, and let’s start creating a code so that will allow us to replicate repeatedly.”  This would be the conversation for even the most primitive forms of life that can be contemplated, which involve billions of atoms.  And this is of course billions of years before even the most primitive “language”, or chemical communication existed.

I see no way to defeat this thought experiment of imagining a “conversation” between clusters of atoms – unless they had some pre-programmed inclination to begin forming, and then replicating.  And pre-programming implies intelligence, which implies purpose, and we are back in the theist camp.

There seems to be no answer about the creation and complexification of life except to say, “that’s just the way it is.”  Not a very satisfying or scientific approach in the noble search for Truth!  And we would have to say the same about another astounding development: namely the human’s ability to understand and discuss these “laws” at all.  A collection of atoms (those of the human) able to decipher and predict the behavior of atoms outside itself, using non-material tools such as calculus, causality, and host of other abstract “laws”.  I find it very difficult to fit this ability into a purely mechanistic and random universe.

Finally, nearly all scientific materialists presume the sense of saying organisms mutate in order to increase their chances of survival.   Self preservation is an obvious and nearly universal instinct.   In fact, many young people today might suggest that nearly all human complexity, with its exalted talk of love and romance, and community values, and moral standards, all just comes down to perpetuation of the species.

As mentioned earlier, why is continuation of a species good?  Why would a mechanistic universe care if my genetic code continued?   Self preservation is a basic drive, but only valuable or good if something in the universe deems it as a good.  But before life began there was no such being, and after it began no such being until the very very recent appearance of human beings.   As an atheist I can observe “Life Is,”  but I cannot make the moral judgment “Life is Good.”

This also seems to challenge the edifice of natural selection.  Being honest, there really is no “selection,” as there is no agent making that decision, just random change.   And if the fundamental force at work is continuation of a species, why would any species develop beyond the most basic life form?  Isn’t a simple virus or bacteria much more able to survive and proliferate than a life form that requires locomotion, wings, lungs, eyeballs, sex organs, or clothes in winter?  Isn’t a lichen or amoeba better adapted to the basic laws of natural selection than any human, with all our needs and complexities?   Isn’t in this sense the ant and the cockroach, not to mention a virus or bacteria, “superior” to the human?  They certainly have lived much longer and in a broader variety of environments.  As a consistent atheist, I think this is what I must conclude.

What about life on other planets? Atheists seem to relish the idea of finding life elsewhere, or showing that life on this planet started from elsewhere, such as David Davies’ suggestion that life was brought here by asteroids from Mars that collided with the earth.   But such a theory does not challenge the theist position of a Creator creating life – it shifts the source, not the cause.   Doesn’t it do the Creator more credit to create many forms of life all over the universe, instead of on just one planet?   The puzzle is not that life exists on only one planet, or on a billion, it is the fact that it exists at all.

The anthropic principle, the idea that science appears to have uncovered laws of nature that are very finely and delicately balanced to create life, seems to me to create another legitimate challenge to the atheist position.   One current and popular atheist response is to say that there are an infinitude of universes, so ours is not special at all, just the one that happens to have life as we experience it.   Again, this shifts the scale of life and creation, but not its ultimate cause.  How does adding theoretical universes solve the riddle of this real one we actually experience?  How is a creator of infinite universes less credible than the creator of one?   And isn’t atheism supposed to be grounded in scientific observation and fact?   Yet by definition we cannot know or experience or prove the existence of anything truly outside our own universe.

There have been various arguments to prove that life or intelligence of some kind can occur at random, as long as enough time is added to the equation.  One is reminded of the very famous example of putting a thousand monkeys at a thousand typewriters for a thousand years – would it be mathematically possible for even one, short Shakespeare poem to arise spontaneously?   Atheists might say yes, theists would likely say no.  But both miss the point.   We are taking one of the most highly organized life forms in the known universe (a monkey), and combining him with a typewriter (which is the creation of the most developed creature in the known universe, the human), and adding a hypothetical that those two supremely developed creations could stay in an organized relationship (monkeys-typing) for a thousand years.   In other words, the thought experiment starts at a point that is at the very end of the evolutionary chain, in order to try to answer how the chain began.   Finally, at the deepest level, even if those monkeys did type even a short poem, there was nothing in the universe that would consider a poem valuable, or beautiful, or intelligent, or poetic.  It is only humans who would recognize a poem as a poem. We have again projected our values and standards backward in time.

The most common defense of the complexification of life through random selection, is that it takes a very very long time.   Assuming natural selection is accurate in describing the development of life (it is certainly accurate in describing the development within species), we overlook difficulties in the theory by wrapping them in the thick mists of “millenia.”   Of course we don’t see half evolved eyes and wings all around us, any more than half humans/half apes, but it is all because developments happen at such a staggeringly slow pace.

Why does slowness (or speed) prove something to be purely materialistic?   Let us again set up that hypothetical video camera in a primordial pool 3.5 to 4 billion years ago.  Suppose in one case a fish develops before our eyes in 10 years, but in the second case the exact same fish appears in 10 million years.  Same location, same material forces at work, same fish produced, same development – only one thing is different – TIME.   But time is fundamentally neutral, it does not add material, or intelligence, or direction, to the situation at hand.  Yes, from our human experience development of complex organisms takes a great deal of time, but is there an a priori reason this must be so?    We again project our current experience back upon creation as a whole, adding in intelligence and purpose all along the way.

As an atheist, I remain stumped in trying to explain how something came from nothing, in this case, how life (and the intelligence and order it displays) can really spring from non-life (assuming the universe did not have some ordered or intelligent force behind its creation).

The dilemma I find myself in as an atheist is this:  if my atheistic universe allows only blind material forces, then how can I account for the intelligence and purpose that seems to lie behind the existence of life?  Here it seems the theist is at an advantage, as he or she can theorize material AND non-material realities are at play in the universe, and thus at least in theory can account for the existence of planets (pure matter), plants (simple life), animals humans (conscious life), angels (pure spirits), and even a God or gods (uncreated spirit).

#5  Consciousness

Trying to explain how life came to be is one thing, and at least with fuzzy thinking and talk of billions of years of incremental change, it can seem plausible.   But how, or more important, why, would a collection of inanimate atoms combine to create consciousness, a sense of “I-ness”, an ability to reflect on ones own self and the world around us?

We most likely imagine our brains as a kind of hologram – atoms collected in such a way that they can project a sense of “me-ness.”   This projection remains stable every time we wake up, and regardless of the fact that all the cells in our body completely replace themselves every seven years or so.  And the sense of self remains completely intact even if we lose a limb, or two, or three, or four, or lose our sense of sight, sound, and so on.

Looking backwards we may be able to see the value to such a creature, but again, try to conceive of random mutations resulting in choosing to create such a being.  Sorry, random mutations can’t “choose,” so it must have just been a random mutation?

We will again invoke the trick of time, as if it somehow adds to the equation.  I cannot see how it does, nor can I fit a self-conscious being in a purely materialist universe.  Billiard balls can’t think.   And even trillions of them in fancy structures are not one step closer to creating one thought or any sense of consciousness.   Yet here we are.

One can try to say that, again through blind evolution, the universe has created immaterial things like thoughts and concepts and consciousness.  But if I do that, I appear to be returning to some form of theism, because a stone can’t produce a thought….there must have been that “thought potential” hidden in the stone, or in the universe somewhere, which is exactly what a theist would argue.

So my atheist side feels boxed into a corner.  Either I maintain that consciousness, thoughts, the sense of “I”, and concepts like beauty and truth and love are purely and only physical things, which directly contradicts my experience, or I concede that there may be something beyond the material, but that is not allowed in the atheistic system I am trying to defend.

Using an analogy, the atheist position is like stating that this universe is made of only black marbles (physical matter).   Discovering even one white, or gray marble would prove such a theory is wrong.  Now an theist would not argue against the existence of the black marbles, in fact they could be predominant in the observable universe, but would maintain there are also white marbles (spiritual, non-physical realities).   It seems to me this puts the theist at a great advantage, because the exact ratio or black and white is not known, and if one is honest, the mix of black and white is rather perplexing, and open to endless debate.  As a pure atheist, I have only my black marbles, and evidence to the contrary has to be dismissed as fantasy.

#6  Spiritual/Religious Experiences

The analogy with the marbles relates well to the consideration of spiritual experiences.    If atheism is true, then all the religious and spiritual experiences of all people in all times, are 100% illusions.  Every one.  Even one valid spiritual experience would dissolve the atheist position; the stakes are all or nothing.

We must be prepared to have all churches, mosques, synagogues, temples, and shrines torn down, every book on spiritual or religious topics burned, every mention of the non-material world banned from school and public discourse.  I am not trying to encourage violence or just be inflammatory and intolerant – most of us would agree to leave all these things but only out of a desire to avoid unpleasantness, not because we thought they had anything of substance.  If I was consistent in wanting humanity to embrace truth, I would think I should prefer they all be dissolved rather than encouraged.

Theists are able to take a much more tolerant position.  One could reject some experiences as auto-suggestions, some visions as mere chemical imbalances in the brain due to, say, poor diet, some prophecies as fabrications to meet emotional needs, etc. but some experiences might be deemed true encounters with the spiritual, non-material world.   Nor does theism conflict with scientific progress and the theory of evolution – it would only affirm that science does not have the means to measure or pass judgment on the spiritual world.

We could plausibly conclude theism is a confused mess, given the plethora of conflicting religious experiences and dogmas.   And we can charge that the variety of religious experience proves that none can be true, as they seem to make claims that cancel each other out.  And we are almost certainly right that some experiences claimed to be spiritual are nothing but fabrications of an excited mind or heart.

Yet the blizzard of spiritual experiences and religious traditions spanning all of human history seem to suggest evidence for at least something beyond the material.

Then there is the disturbing evidence of natural selection.  If natural selection is what determines what attributes a given organism keeps or rejects, then how could natural selection so constantly produce humans that so adamantly insist there is a non-material component to existence?  Put even more starkly:  How could something that does not exist and never has, be so consistently experienced (at least subjectively) within a materialist universe?   Religious faith and practice appears to be a deeply seated instinct – how or why did it get there, and why is it usually at the core of every civilization?   Are we going to reject the results of natural selection, the process which we say shapes all of human development and progress?

Atheism can be very attractive, but I hesitate to suggest my grasp on reality is so certain and so superior that I can condemn every spiritual experience in human history, as well as every religious system.

Again, for the theist it is not an all or nothing game – they can pick and choose their version of spiritual truth.   But as a consistent atheist, I must reject every spiritual experience, within myself and down through history.

#7  Death

I have trouble reconciling the human reaction to death with the atheistic position.   Look anywhere in human history, or within your circle of friends and family, and death is treated with horror, shock, outrage, deep sorrow, bewilderment, a sense of betrayal, and so on.  This, for a process that comes to every single living thing. – always has, always will.

Nearly all the great literature of the world deals with death in some way.  So do cheap novels and shallow movies.  Death is a really, really big deal, and when it comes unexpectedly, or to an innocent child, those who experience the loss of a loved one can be destroyed by depression, hopelessness, and despair.

Why is life so cherished?   We are merely random creatures thrown up on the beach of this planet, generated by the blind workings of mechanical forces.  And any reading of history makes plain that large swaths of humanity have lived lives full of suffering.  Yet suicide is almost always considered a crime or a profound mental disorder.   Why would this be?   Why do we not respect the decision of people to find, on balance, that their life is no longer worth living and have the ability to end it when and as they choose?   Given the track record of suffering across history, why wouldn’t we see life as more of a curse than a blessing, and celebrate death?  Shouldn’t suicide – dying on your own terms with no prolonged suffering – be the most common form of death, and welcomed by most cultures?

Belief in life after death is another persistent and inexplicable fixation throughout history.  Why would we hope for a different life, or a better one, or a longer one, or a resurrected one?   With so little evidence such a thing exists, and with so little evidence life is anything other than a rather miserable and short affair, why do we not more gladly exit this life?    Why is death not as natural and simple as seeing a leaf fall from the tree?

#8 Beauty

Beauty is one of the great intangibles of life.  Everyone is attracted to it, everyone sees it around them, whether in people, music, art, or nature.  It is a quality equally valued by the atheist and the theist.  But what it is is very hard to define.

One thing for sure, it is a sum that is greater than its parts.  Music, beloved by all, and of endless variety, is, from a physical point of view, just patterns of vibrations in the air, hitting our eardrums at various intervals.   Not unlike poetry – ink on a page or spoken vibrations in the air.   Landscapes are just piles of dirt and rock, a sleeping child is just an collection of cells at rest.

But no one really buys this reductionist approach.  There is much more to it.  What? As an atheist, I feel that I have to “look the other way” — enjoy beauty without really being able to understand it or praise it.   Once again, “it just is.”  Beauty seems to be a kind of truth, but it is not of the shape that can fit intellectually into the framework of my atheistic beliefs.

#9  Suffering

This reflection is not intended to highlight weaknesses in the theist position, but there is little doubt that one of the aces in the argument against theism is the existence of evil and of suffering.   And not just that it exists, but is rampant, that injustice and cruelty and intense suffering saturate human history.

But doesn’t this charge have a double edge, for the simple reason that it presupposes a moral standard that we intuitively know we have the right to impose on raw experience?   As an atheist, I cannot really explain why seeing a six year girl raped and then murdered is evil.  Do not all organisms die?  Do not some die younger than others?   And all of existence is just the march of blind, physical forces, so an early death, by my standards, cannot be called “evil” or “unjust” or even “untimely.”  What is, is.

And what of the suffering and pain brought on by injustice and cruelty?

Most religions offer some kind of resolution, often by proposing there is an after- life (as clearly ultimate justice is not in this one!), or by pointing out that real free-will could result in the possibility of choosing evil, but as an atheist I have rejected free will and any after-life, so I must say there is no chance for final justice, no final peace, no offer of hope.  When you die, you die, and if your life was full of horrendous suffering, too bad.   Your first-born child is horrifically deformed and requires a life of constant care?  Too bad.

So the human is born with an innate sense of justice, but can never see it realized.  Then how did we develop this sense?  We must suffer what fate dishes out to us and those we love, and there is no hope whatsoever of anything different.  The human seems to be the most badly developed organism, as its core hopes and beliefs are completely out of step with the reality of the universe it inhabits.

All through history religions struggle to explain the mysterious reality of evil and suffering, but from an atheist perspective it seems I cannot even account for calling suffering wrong or evil evil.

Conclusion

One of the attractions to atheism is the belief that it is more honest in confronting life as we find it.   I do not have to theorize a future life to balance the scales of justice, or create a personal God who had a purpose in creating life, consciousness, and beauty.   I accept life as I actually experience it.

Or do I?   The more stumbling blocks I encountered, the more it seemed atheism was mired in faith: faith that the addition of massive amounts of time is all that is needed to allowed life to spring from non-life, faith that life exists on other planets, and faith in an infinitude of hypothetical universes.  I want rational answers based on this planet, the one place we have real, physical, scientific experience.   I am uncomfortable with a “faith-based” atheism – I want to embrace an atheism that is true to its own principles.

Yet the core principal of scientific materialism does not seem to square with my daily experience or with the experience I had read about in all those books or saw during my travels.  I am uncomfortable “pretending” that free will exists, tolerating the illusions about spirituality most people believe, or faking the hand-wringing over death that I know, as an atheist, should not be a big deal.  Saying that universal laws of nature “just happened,” that consciousness “just happened”, that life itself “just happened”, leaves me feeling less than scientific.  Science uses observable data, and then tests a theory to see if the data behaves in the way the theory predicted.   But the data of my own experience, and what I see of the human experience through history, does not seem to fit the theory of atheism.

Another attraction to atheism is that it is broad minded and open-minded, whereas religious people are often portrayed as fixated on a particular set of dogmas and want to impose them on others.  Yet my atheistic ideas seem to lead me to very intolerant positions.  Whereas most people can reasonably argue about which religious experiences are authentic or which religious system is superior, I have to declare all as complete illusions.  Whereas many can reasonably argue on just how many human decisions are really free, and under what conditions, I have to declare free will is impossible. Whereas people can reasonably argue about which truths are universal or what constitutes a proper theory of beauty, I must declare all these abstractions are just physical forces.  Whereas most people can reasonably argue about how humans can best cope with issues of suffering, injustice, and death, I must declare there is no possibility for ultimate resolution or redemption — that life, death, suffering, or, for that matter, nothingness, are all of equal value.

It seems clear that for many who call themselves an atheist, what they mean is they reject a particular version or versions of theism.   That is easy to do, as many religious beliefs seem contradictory, or primitive, or absurd.  But to be a true atheist,  it seems I must reject all that is non-material.  I cannot pick and choose, keeping the non-material values and experiences I like, and rejecting those, say in a particular religious systems, that I do not.

Perhaps the point that brought me to “failing” as an atheist, was the realization that whereas a theist could answer the above nine points in a variety of ways, perhaps answering some very competently and others with less surety, as an atheist I had to be 100% correct in rejecting every point.   A theist could be right about their view on just 4 or 5 of the above points, but I would have to be 9-0.  In other words, as mentioned previously, one single spiritual experience that is proven as legitimate, demolishes atheism.   A theist can propose a variety of attributes to their god or gods, saying their god is distant, impersonal,  loving, vengeful, domineering, capricious and so on, and in varying degrees according to their theistic system.   But I am left in a very tight corner indeed, accepting nothing that is non-material.

And the things humans of all ages cherish, things like friendship, honesty, integrity, love, loyalty, kindness, service, compassion, joy, hope, gratitude, beauty, humor — of what precise collection of atoms are each of these concepts?  How are they explained within my atheistic framework?

In discussions with others, it is clear that very few people really try to be “pure” atheists, or to carefully lay out the principles that underly an atheistic position.    More often I find people rejecting some version of the theism of Christianity, Judaism, or Islam, but retaining an acknowledgment of at least some spiritual realities.  As mentioned above, this strikes me as quite dangerous, because once we accept the Trojan horse of any spiritual reality, we are already lost to the Theist camp, feeling comfortable only because our “spirituality” is less personal and thus seemingly less threatening.

My search is for an atheism that is consistent, and accepts the consequences of its own principles.  I do know that atheists can be more admirable and noble and compassionate than a devoutly religious person, but in this case they seem to be living in a way they cannot explain, out of step with their own core beliefs, almost “in spite” of them.    My hope has always been for a system of thought that supports, and is consistent with, ones behavior.

In the end, it is not my family tradition or cultural formation that leads me to confess I am a “failed” atheist, but experience itself, both within my mind and heart, in my experience of the outer world, and in my understanding of history and science.   Some would say atheism is grounded in direct experience, theism in beliefs that cannot be proven.   For me it seems the opposite.   As much as I might sometimes like for the theory of atheism to be true, that theory is pounded at relentlessly, like waves of the sea, by daily, lived experience.   My atheistic aspirations are ground down, moment by moment, by the concrete experience of daily life.  Every moment of every day I experience free will, belief in right and wrong, consciousness, beauty, sorrow over death and suffering, as well as hope, but find for these realities no place in the atheistic framework.

Where have I gone wrong in my attempt to embrace the atheist view as true?

Dear Friend,

All of us by now know people facing cancer – it could be a family member, a close friend, or ourselves. I have decided to write, not an essay, but instead a very personal letter, from my heart to yours, from someone who has lived through Stage IV cancer. In fact, cancer took the life of my best friend, then infected my own body, and then attacked my 19-year-old son (also Stage IV).

Sometimes concerned people around us think it best to encourage a kind of denial, saying that everything will be fine, that you will sail through this, that life will be back to normal soon. I never appreciated those sentiments, and I will not offer them to you. The reality is that cancer kills most of the people it infects, and I don’t think you will be helped by evasions and easy assurances. This could be your last illness. Whatever the outcome, cancer changes your life forever. I now date nearly everything in my life based on whether it occurred before or after my illness.

No matter what course cancer takes in your life, I want to give you some very good, and very surprising news: Facing cancer in the case of my friend, myself, and my son were all what I would call “peak” experiences in my life. Those times were the most painful, but, as shocking as it sounds, also among the “happiest.”

Let me try to explain how that could be so, in hopes that you too can transform what is certainly a shock and time of anguish into something deeply meaningful and even beautiful…

When confronted with a potentially terminal illness, it is time to face the big questions of life. We can no longer pretend we will live forever, and we can no longer be satisfied by living day to day in pursuit of comfort and pleasure, as if we were mere beasts. We need to ask what human life is about, what meaning there is in suffering, why God allowed this, and am I ready to die – has my life been well lived?

I suppose we should have looked for answers to these questions all our lives, but a disease like cancer finally forces us to face them. I believe that is one of the great benefits of such an illness. Ready or not, you must begin to face the core issues of human existence. And if you think through and embrace the answers, your inner life can be transformed, even if outwardly your body is deteriorating.

My first direct experience with cancer occurred when my best friend called to say she had terminal breast cancer. At the time she had five young children. She was calm about it, very matter of fact, because she was a woman of deep faith (Roman Catholic), and she had spent much of her life contemplating the truths of her faith. As she wrote to a friend, “ I am not afraid to die, not by a long shot. Ever since I knew I had incurable cancer I have thought long and hard about how I life my life and what I think death means. I have loved the life God gave me….I want to see God; I want to see the One who thought all of this up. I cannot imagine that He will be less interesting and beautiful that all of the things He has made…this life is short. Eternity is — well, it’s eternal”.

Her battle with cancer was to last years, and during a time of remission, she even gave birth to a sixth child. Despite her physical deterioration, she continued to be one of the busiest people I have ever known – raising six children, maintaining a home, serving as President of a non-profit, organizing local political campaigns, giving radio and TV interviews, and finding time to climb in the white mountains. And because her body had adverse reactions to nearly all medications, she was not even given relief from the pain of her terminal condition. I remember the last time I saw her, as she lay semi-conscious on a couch in her home only a day or so before her death, she still seemed genuinely interested in the people around her, and was not absorbed in her own dire situation. She showed me how to live, and die, heroically.

Her example was an inspiration to many, and a book was written about her life, entitled: “The Appalling Strangeness of the Mercy of God.” What influence did such an untimely death have on those around her? This is something we simply cannot know in its entirety, but her life was surely an example of how good can come from suffering and tragedy.

A few years later, although I seemed in excellent health, I noticed a growing lump on my neck. I dismissed it with a laugh, joking to friends, “It is probably a big lump of cancer and I have only a few months to live.” But when I finally had a check-up, my doctor realized it could be serious and the tests revealed I indeed had cancer. It was Stage IV because the lump was so large. So, my dear friend, do not shrug off symptoms, do not delay getting to a doctor for tests!

I learned that most people with that cancer at that stage had an average of 16 months to live. At that time I had nine wonderful children, and by far the worst emotional pain was to consider I would never see them grow up, marry, and have children of their own.

If you have cancer, you are bombarded by an avalanche of attention and concern from relatives, friends, church members, and doctors. Life becomes something of a blur – all the new circumstances and considerations make one feel disoriented. There are moments of panic, of despair, of deep sadness – times when I would cry myself to sleep.

I did have the conviction that good could come out of this illness. I expressed this in a letter to my children not long after the diagnosis:

“….Some people seem outraged that something like this would fall upon me now. I feel no such outrage. I have dark times when things are hard to bear emotionally, but there is not a moment of feeling resentful or angry at God.
I will tell you the truth. Most of the time I feel flattered [to have been chosen to undergo such suffering]. My life [to this point] has been filled with blessings…a wonderful wife, nine children I admire and love, good health, a loving brother and sister and mother, rewarding work and the opportunity to travel and learn. One way of looking at a life like this is to see that God knew I was not capable of handling more suffering.
At this point, either God saw that this cup of suffering was needed to set the remainder of my life in a direction that would lead to my salvation, or He knew I was ready to suffer on behalf of others, as His Son did. Probably some combination of both. If I could be a worthy steward of suffering, perhaps to the point of accepting even death, maybe it will help bring blessings to those I love…I cannot know the full plan, or even my exact role in it, and in this life I never will. But surely each of us can catch a glimpse of the reality that our lives are part of a masterful and breathtakingly beautiful tapestry. Even the tapestry of suffering can weave something beautiful, especially when accepted and offered to God on behalf of others….suffering can be redemptive, it can perfect our human nature, rather than just be a punishment or a senseless riddle. I see the Christian view of suffering as its crowning glory. Now I have a real opportunity to see if I can live that truth, not just believe it intellectually. I am honored to have been chosen!”

That was written before the treatment, and it was all nice theory. Can our best religious or spiritual intentions hold up under the weight of real and constant pain?

In a word, yes. Not only can they hold up, but our faith can actually flourish and solidify in the crucible of suffering.

I recall, as if it was yesterday, a particular, culminating experience when I was about half way through my treatment…

Massive radiation to the neck literally burns away the skin inside your throat. The problem is that we must swallow about 900 times a day, and for me every swallow brought stabbing pain so intense I had to hit my thigh to handle it, picking different areas as sections of my leg became back and blue. Eating was almost unthinkable. Swallowing even soft food like yogurt felt like I was swallowing razor-sharp, dry stones that tore away the tender skin that was left in my throat.

In addition, I was having bouts of nausea that brought on violent vomiting. This was the worst, as the stomach contains acids strong enough to break down almost any substance, and having such acid forced up into my lacerated throat was beyond horrible.

At that one time I remember so well, I was vomiting with such violence that I was thrown on all fours like a rag doll, as if possessed by a demon. My stomach seemed determined to roll up and exit my throat with such violence that my breath was cut off and I panicked that I would actually suffocate.

Up to that point I had been handling pain in a way I think we all understand. We try to avoid facing it head on, and instead try to look past it, thinking ahead to when it will be gone, if we can just hold on. We think the best we can do is to be stoic and tough it out. At our very best, we tell ourselves God allowed this for some mysterious reason, and we resign ourselves to enduring it as best we can.

But at that moment I embraced something radically different…

I saw that this pain, while not what God originally planned, was undeniably part of the world we inhabit, and He allows it for some reason, and ultimately He could use it for our good or the good of those we love. So if He allows it, and it cannot be avoided, I will it also. I embrace this nightmare. I do not fear the next horrid wretching, I embrace it. I choose it. “Bring it on!” I cried inwardly. Incredibly, it was not a cry of stoic endurance, but of ecstatic joy.

The pain was just as excruciating, but it was one of the most liberating moments of my entire life. I had been the slave of suffering before, but was now, at least for that moment, its master. I had transcended the worst that the material world could throw at me. I was truly free, truly alive. I had exercised my freedom in such a radical way that I was more fully human than perhaps at any other moment.

I hope you do not have to endure a physical trial like that. But in every occasion of pain and suffering that comes our way, humans have a very profound and powerful weapon. Free Will.

We tend to take free will for granted. But in a universe of only material forces (the atheist view), our thoughts and actions would only be the result of physical forces acting upon us, meaning we could not have true free will, and thus we could not be moral agents. If we are not moral agents, there is no good or evil, and there also is no ability to love, as love requires free will. Robots cannot love, only persons can. If there is no spiritual element to the universe, our pain and our death would be without meaning, as they are mere physical occurrences in an empty universe – and we would have no right to complain.

But we do complain. We know by our own lived experience that the universe is not empty. We know there is good and evil, and we intuit that death is an interruption, a tragedy. And we correctly perceive that we have, at least to some extent, free will.

Even animals and plants, while sharing with us the mysterious life-force, do not seem to have the gift of free will as we do. Humans appear to be quite unique in the cosmos, sharing free will with angelic spirits (which almost all spiritual systems believe exist) and with the Creator of all that is.

Interestingly, this free will, a power shared only with angels and the Creator, is the only plausible explanation for the suffering and evil we see around us. All men and women throughout history intuit there is a higher standard to which we are called, but somehow the consequences of our own choices has led humanity down a very dark path, and here we are. So free will is a very powerful weapon – a power that brings us close to the angels, but, when misused, leads us to act like demons.

Why would the Creator give us such a weapon? Because without freedom, there can be no love, and love is the essence of the Divine as well as the highest calling for each one of us. Our destiny is to love and be loved, and that is what brings lasting human happiness. So free will, love, and happiness are intertwined – you cannot remove one without destroying the others. Think about that.

We are not the Creator, and clearly not living in an ideal world. What we see and experience is only a tiny chapter in creation, in a grand story about which we do not know the exact details of the beginning or the end. But what we do actually experience reveals the reality of suffering and pain, as well as the reality of goodness, kindness, and love.

The Creator of All That Is appears to know that this dark phase of the human experience is necessary, but he does give us the power to overcome suffering and pain – not by making it disappear, but by learning from it, redeeming it, and turning it to good effect.

My experience with cancer brought me into a world of pain I could not have imagined beforehand. Pain was a daily companion, a kind of silent and nearly constant partner to my existence. Yet it taught valuable lessons. It helped me to confront my own mortality, to look past the drive to indulge bodily pleasures, and to be more compassionate to others who were in pain. Chronic pain is impossible to really explain to someone else, so in that sense it is a very lonely experience, and this will tend to encourage communication with God, who is always with us, and who, as the Creator of All, must understand what I was going through.

I would never choose such pain, and I can argue at God for allowing it, but I cannot deny the good that came from it. Greater compassion for others and a deeper prayer life are two of the greatest fulfillments of the human person. They are key components to true happiness. And they grew in me because of pain.

The most liberating value to pain and suffering is that we can use it to help those we love. While many people said they were praying for me, I believed that I could be of more value praying for friends and family, as I could offer not just casual words and good intentions, but my very body and the suffering I would endure. In an atheistic universe there is no transcendent connection between one collection of atoms and another, but if we are in fact a spiritual family, connected in mysterious but real ways, then we can use our free will to ask the Creator of All to accept our sacrifices as a gift of love.

I asked each person who said they would pray for me to instead give me a specific intention for which I could pray during my illness. Everyone is happy to have you pray for them or someone they love. I felt wonderfully useful, even empowered! Eventually I made a stack of index cards with these prayers, and would put it on my chest each time my head was bolted into the frame on the radiation table, and each time I faced the agony of eating. It did not remove the physical trauma, but it did elevate my soul, and which is more important?

I recall for a time I thought months of my life had been “lost” as I had been bed-ridden and couldn’t work, but then it dawned on me that I had been in touch with more people, had more visitors in my house, and prayed for more people than ever in my life. Out of the ashes of suffering, something beautiful had been created.

But God had even bigger plans in my life for suffering. Soon after my own recovery, I had a third intimate encounter with cancer — and by far the most traumatic.

My 19-year-old son Aaron had been deteriorating before my very eyes, and no one seemed to know why. I was working every day with him on a renovation project, but with each passing day he had less energy, then began to have trouble sitting or walking comfortably. Because he was young and had always been healthy, we shrugged off the symptoms, and put off going to a doctor. But one day as I looked at his haggard face while he courageously worked beside me, I had the thought “whatever this is, it will kill him if we do not do something.” Finally, a CAT scan revealed cancer in his bones, spleen, hip, lungs, under the arms, and in his chest. I assumed he would not live another year.

This brought on another astonishing revelation. My anguish over my son vastly outweighed the anguish over my own illness. How could this be? For myself I had cried a few times, but with my son I was barely able to function. I would need time to be alone, sometimes several times a day, just to release the cries, the roars, and the tears that gushed out, almost out of control. The experience was an emotional tsunami it is impossible to describe unless you have been through it. If, my friend, something of this magnitude has entered your life, we understand each other.

My first counsel is to be patient with yourself. Facing the prospect of sudden and unexpected death of someone very close to you is a severe emotional trauma, with effects we can neither predict nor control. Do not even try to pretend you are in control. Let the tears flow as often and as long as they need. Do not expect anyone to understand or comprehend what you are going through, except someone who has also faced the sudden loss a child.

Also remember it is OK to be angry and bewildered with God. He has allowed suffering to remain on this earth, as it is the consequence of our misuse of free will, and somehow we are meant to work through this dark and hopefully brief period of the human experience. But it is fitting that we are upset at pain and suffering, as it was not part of our original destiny, nor is it part of our eternal destiny, so God surely understands our outrage. He does not demand passivity or calm acceptance, he wants sincere dialogue and ultimately our love. But you can argue like hell along the way. I sure did.

But as was the case with my own illness, how could something so traumatic be viewed as something beautiful, as I now would say those days of suffering for my son were among the most meaningful of my life? Because of love. Because I came out of myself completely and threw myself at the Mercy of almighty God. Because I was not just mumbling prayers to an abstract Deity, I was screaming at God, negotiating, offering my life over and over and over in exchange for my son, hating what was happening but using that precious gift of free will, to say, through the tears, that I accepted whatever was to come, that I would lose my precious son if that was part of the divine plan. The searing pain tore open my heart, and out of it gushed a love that was pure and true.

True love is seeing the eternal good in another person, and willing their good above your own. If you live that truth, to the point where you truly surrender your life for the one you love, then you are living human life at its absolute peak, and that is why suffering so intensely on behalf of someone else could be called a blessing.

And we were made to love not just other humans, but our Creator as well. When you work to be humble enough to accept the mysterious Will of the Creator of All, and engage in a personal, ongoing, intimate conversation with Him, life gains a new dimension, a divine dimension. Living with that divine dimension is what all humans were destined to enjoy, and it is another foundation of lasting human happiness.

When all is well with us, we can tend to live for the moment, for pleasures, entertainment, and comfort, almost as if we were just another animal. After all, animals enjoy all five senses, they eat, and mate, and move about, they even live in community and communicate with each other. But humans have another dimension, we are a mysterious blend of spiritual and physical properties, and we cannot find lasting happiness in the physical ease that might appease an animal. Happiness means realizing our true nature, and our nature includes the spiritual realities of love, both with one another and with our Creator. Alas, in our fallen state we tend to default to a rather animal existence, and sometimes it is only suffering that can seem to bring us to our higher senses. In an odd way then, our greatest fear – suffering – is the means to our greatest advancement – living a fully human life, coming out of ourselves, growing in compassion, and turning to our Creator for help.

Dealing with cancer just might be the terrible tragedy that helps you find this transcendent “happiness.” What we most fear and dread can be transformed into something beautiful, into love and divine dialogue. It is then that you are truly human, alive to the fullest.

The exact reason you, or I, or my son was chosen to endure cancer will not be known in this phase of life. And it is only human that we would cry out in bewilderment “Why me?” And surely we have all wondered why God so often does not seem to answer our prayers. I think we have to remember that we did not write the story of creation, and we are able to perceive only a tiny sliver of it. Consider that every thought and action of every human influences, to some degree, every other thought and action, and each ripple has been impacted by thoughts and actions that extend far back in time and also forward into the future, all the way to the end of creation. To really know if a particular prayer was in our or a loved one’s best interest, we would basically have to be omniscient. Is it really so surprising that the answer to our prayer might be “no” or “not now,” or that something better will happen instead?

Is it reasonable that we demand to be omniscient, or insist that God make the universe entirely comprehensible to our very finite and imperfect minds and hearts? And if we accept we are not gods, then how can we demand to know the full reason behind everything that happens, or presume we should know how to judge it?

We do our best with what we know. We ask for guidance and strength. We blossom in the relationship with the One who made us, regardless of the result of this or that prayer. We trust that the One who IS omniscient will do what is best.

Thanks be to God my son and I survived our first encounter with cancer. Some will not be so fortunate, but death will come to us all, whether sooner or later. I find it a great comfort that human history, regardless of the time, the culture, or the religion, seems to attest to the reality of life beyond the grave. Even many pagan philosophies have reached the same conclusion. And apart from the testimony of the human race, we need only look deep into our own heart, our own experience, our own intuition, and see that this belief in the permanence of the spirit remains. This phase of life is neither the beginning, nor the end. Death is a door, with life on both sides.

If you are facing cancer now, you have the freedom to use your free will to decide how you will handle each new challenge. At every moment, because of the potent gift of free will, you have the power and the freedom to spiral down into despair or rise to become a better person than you were before.

We can transform the experiences we most fear – suffering and even death – into something beautiful. We can choose to embrace what is most noble in the human spirit and lay down our lives for Love.

Duration: 42 minutes
Audience: Non-denominational Christian (live talk was given to a Business Leadership Forum)

Transcript:

There is surely no one who does not struggle to balance the demands of one’s professional work, with family life, with one’s civc an religious duties, not to mention hobbies, finances, and so on.  To explore the central themes of faith, family, and work, I will share some personal experiences in my own life, as I think it will show, better than pure abstractions or tidy theories, how we each struggle to live by our core values, how we struggle to keep our priorities straight.  And I will also offer 12 specific ideas for your consideration, drawn from those experiences, as we go along.  In conclusion, I will try to show how the hidden life of Christ might offer us key insights into these areas.

The first idea, which no doubt sounds uninspired, is actually an important motif through all these remarks:  You’ve no doubt heard it many times:  Idea #1 – Ideas Have Consequences, or better, Ideas Should have Consequences.

And let me adjust that into more of a personal challenge:

May I have the courage and integrity to allow my key ideas to have consequences in my life.  In other words, may I strive to identify my core values and then work to align my lifestyle and daily behavior with those ideas.  If I do that, I am keeping my priorities straight.

What I can tend to do, and you are probably similar, is I can allow immediate circumstances and superficial pressures to direct my life and actions.  I let the “urgent” override the “important.”  I can spend most of my time “putting out fires” and very little time reflecting on what started those fires in the first place.  Sound familiar?    This reflection will hopefully help us step back a bit, taking the time to work toward formulating priorities for those three key areas of Faith, Family, and Work.

Let’s begin with Faith.  I will go back quite a ways in my own life.  I was brought up in a home without any religion or faith life whatsoever.   My family lived in an affluent area near Philadelphia, though my family itself was quite middle class.  Interestingly, one idea seemed clear to me, even as a young, unformed teen growing up – that the rampant materialism I saw around me was not enough to make life meaningful.  I knew there must be more.

At the time, Christianity struck me as hypocritical, and not to be taken seriously, because it preached about service of the poor and love for the poor, but all I saw were supposed Christians chasing material wealth with all their heart, mind, and soul.

Looking elsewhere, I came upon Transcendental Meditation.  Basically it is a simple form of Eastern meditation, where you sit quietly and repeat a mantra, and supposedly, this can eventually lead you to enlightenment, or nirvana, a state of complete detachment from material things.

For me this seemed a legitimate antidote to the consuming materialism I saw around me, and also to the escapism of the drug culture that was popular at the time.  Instead of spending holidays at the beach, or hanging out with friends, several times a year I would go on retreats, which were times of complete silence and extra meditation.

In fact, when Junior year of high school came around and it was time to look at colleges, I never even contemplated attending any college except Maharishi International University (MIU), located in Fairfield, Iowa.  I was so enthused about going there that I skipped my Senior year to get there as soon as possible.

The reason I share all this from my distant past is because I was taking an idea about my spiritual life, in my case the idea of spiritual enlightenment, and making it a priority in my life.  I was letting an important idea have consequences!

One of the more sensational techniques I learned at MIU was levitation.  We actually practiced it together, twice a day, transforming the gymnasium into a ”flying center” by covering the entire floor in thick foam, where we could practice our hopping and flying techniques….but that is a subject for another talk and another day….

I was actually very happy at MIU.  I spent three idealistic, wholesome, and academically intense years there.   And I would have to admit I left not so much because of another spiritual call, but because I was getting restless.  I had done very well academically at MIU and I wanted to see if I could succeed in the “real” academic world, and get top grades at a “respected” institution.

And also, frankly, I was weary of living such an austere, chaste lifestyle.

So I took summer classes at the University of Pennsylvania, fell for a lovely girl from Brown University who was also taking summer courses there, and, well, decided not to return to the idealistic bubble of MIU.

One could say my priority shifted from the spiritual to the more carnal.

Was making that a priority the key to finding happiness?  Any votes?    No, it was not, and after I graduated from Penn I was still searching.   I decided to hitch-hike around the world, and see what new wisdom and insight I could gather in foreign countries.

I’ll skip over that time, except to say that after about a year and a half on the road, and traveling through 20 countries, I came upon a community in Switzerland called “L’Abri” which, in french, means “The Shelter.”

L’Abri was a Christian community founded to present the case for Christianity to people like me – non-believers and disbelievers.  A wonderful place.

And while I did not become a Christian there, my life was completely changed, and by a very important idea –  It was there that I confronted the issue of abortion.

Up to that point I had simply accepted that abortion was a necessary, even compassionate response to the problem of an unwanted pregnancy.

But when I read that after an abortion the pieces of the child’s body have to be reassembled to be sure everything has been evacuated, I immediately saw that abortion was a brutal act of violence that could not be justified.

Remember my opening theme for consideration:  Core values should have consequences.   Align your lifestyle with your core values.

Well, there I was, staying in a tent outside the L’Abri community — with a young lady.  We were touring Switzerland together at the time – so small wonder really, that I did not embrace Christianity while I was there – I had other priorities.  I’ll make my ponderings at that time short and to the point.  What if that young lady became pregnant?  Would I make a mockery of marriage and marry someone with whom I had little in common?   Or would I be the ultimate coward and abandon her to raise the child alone or give it up for adoption?  Or would I support killing my own innocent child, my firstborn son or daughter?

Now there, gentlemen, are a set of ideas that have consequences!

As I reflected on this issue, my faith in modern, secular society began to unravel.  If my culture could be so wrong in calling something as horrific as abortion “liberating” and a “fundamental right”, then maybe it was just as wrong in its total distain for Christianity.

Also, secular society was wholeheartedly promoting this idea of “sex without consequences”, an idea from which I was benefiting at that very moment, but which I now saw as nothing but a deceptive and dangerous illusion.

I believe this illusion that there is such a things as “sex without consequences” (thanks in large part to the use of artificial birth control) is numbing the consciences and castrating the spiritual sensitivities of countless young men and women. It is one of the reasons that the pro-life position is so important.  It is a such a powerful and fundamental idea that it just might help young people see through the deceptions of our modern culture, it just might puncture the bubble of false promises.  So idea number #2:  Be unapologetically pro-life, and encourage your kids to confront and think about this core value and to act upon the consequences that follow from it.

       We shouldn’t be preachy or judgmental, just help kids confront those three options I saw so clearly.

This talk is on keeping priorities straight.  At that time I had to honor my newly formed pro-life convictions and live a chaste lifestyle. I also knew it was time to take a closer look at Christianity.

I decided to return to America and volunteer at a pro-life office.  Shortly thereafter I was blessed with the grace of an intense conversion experience, and, thanks be to God, a deep faith has remained with me to this day.

I did in fact return briefly to Europe – this time for a pro-life conference in Germany, and there I met Jenny, the women who was to become my wife – she was from Ohio but was also attending the conference.  At that same time I was accepted into the graduate school of Education at Harvard, so when I returned to the US I enrolled there and completed my degree just before Jenny and I were married.

Upon graduation there were various job offers,  but my passion and therefore my priority, my core value, remained the pro-life cause, so I chose to accept a very low paying, administrative job at the local pro-life office in Boston.  Here we come upon idea #3 Don’t be afraid to put convictions above comfort, ideals over income.

Now I am sure each of us has a story to tell of an unpredictable turn in his or her professional life.  If you don’t have one, or two, or several – trust me, you will.  Life rarely goes in a straight line.   One of my professional surprises happened early on…

I was living on a small salary of $16,000 a year — even in those days not a fraction of what I needed to afford a home, so I accepted an offer from a married couple (actually friends from my MIU days who had also moved to Boston) to joint own a two-family house in Waltham, Massachusetts.  They both had good jobs with good income, so we qualified for a loan, and I had just received enough for a downpayment from a modest inheritance from my grandfather.   It seemed a wise choice.

However, less than a year after moving in and not long before my wife Jenny was to give birth to our first child, this other couple announced they were moving.

Jenny was in no condition to move and create a new nest.  And I did not make enough money to get a place of our own.   What to do? I rented out the other side of the house, and voila, became a landlord.

My first tenants were very quiet and paid rent on time – plus their rent covered most of our mortgage.  So I concluded that being a landlord was easy!  Wow, was I a naive kid back then.  But back in the late 80s real estate was booming and banks were almost begging people for loans.  So I worked out with our friend to buy out their half of the house, and a year later bought another two family directly across the street, moving in as the home owner in order to keep the interest rate low and qualify more easily, then fixing it up, and renting it out.

My side-career in real estate was born.

What I want to emphasize however, is it did not start as a financial decision, but as a family one – putting the needs of the family first, and keeping my low paying but rewarding job.  It was an attempt to keep my priorities straight.

Allow me to jump forward a few years to finish this part of the story:  The name for the corporation I formed a few years later was “Plus Five Management” as by that time I had 5 kids, planned more, and planned for my real estate to be the main asset that would help them through private school, college, etc.   In fact, I resolved, the good Lord willing, to buy one property for every dependent in my family, and to stop there.  I kept that resolution, and have owned 10 income properties (that’s nine kids plus one wife!) up until retirement.

Now jumping back in time with one house and work in the pro-life office: I had been named the Executive Director of the organization, though I still lived on a very modest salary.  Like many young men in their 20s, hoping to save the world, I probably worked too long and too hard, and in fact my health started to deteriorate.  I saw I needed to re-align my priorities.   In order to be home more and have a more balanced lifestyle, I made the decision to move to New Hampshire and restrict my hours working at the main office, come what may – even if it meant losing my job as Executive Director.

Fortunately, other right to life groups had seen the rapid growth in the Massachusetts organization and had been asking me for help, as fundraising seemed to be my specialty.  What non-profit doesn’t need fundraising, right?  So I ended up forming my own company and being a consultant to a number of non-profits around the country. This allowed me to work out of the home every day, and involve the kids.

This in fact is idea #4: Whenever possible, involve your kids in your work.   At least expose them to it.  Otherwise Dad can be this mysterious being who disappears nearly the whole day, almost every day, and that “disappearing act” is somehow mysteriously related to keeping a roof over their heads and having food on the table. My advice is – Let your kids in on the secret of your work, as best you can.  Bring them with you now and then, or better, get them involved somehow, maybe start something together.

When I started my own consulting business I remember – “hiring” all my kids (and all their friends) to, for example, open the thousands of letters that came back from direct mail fundraising campaigns I had orchestrated.   I marketed those long hours of work as “pizza parties!”.  Slave labor?  Absolutely, and I remain unrepentant to this day.   So Idea #5: Work is good for kids – their minds and their bodies.  Kids can work better, and longer, and at younger ages than you think.  In today’s culture we spoil kids to the detriment of their character. 

That consulting business continued to expand, and I was offered national fundraising positions with good salaries and benefits.  But I turned them down, not wanting to move the family.  And I even decided to slowly phase out the consulting, as it was demanding ever greater amounts of time.   My priority was not to work more and more in order to make more and more money, but to stay close to the family.  I chose to focus on one start-up pro-life outfit, one that did not even have the assets to offer me any salary at first so I even worked for a time on 100% commission.  That job eventually took me around the world on various speaking tours.  And in this case I made the decision to bring children with me:  I took one daughter to Dublin, another to Rome, a group of 3 teens to Austria, and all 8 children and my wife to Kenya.

Now for another change in topic…. Those were very busy years, and I found going to the gym to be indispensable in releasing stress and clearing the mind.  Men – Go to the gym!  It is so helpful – I might even say, essential.  Not just for your body, but for your overall sense of balance, for your family, for your soul!

As my interest in fitness grew, I became very interested in the parallels I was noticing between developing physical fitness and developing spiritual fitness.  It sounds strange, I know, but, for example, we make the same excuses to avoid committing to either one.

For example, see if nearly all of these mental excuses I’m going to list don’t sound familiar.  Imagine you are out of shape and just joined a gym, and there you are, starting to lift weights on one of those big contraptions, or….. a completely different idea…..Suppose you are just starting to make time for the daily habit of sitting down to pray, in silence, alone in your room:   You can be quite sure that either scenario will seem very alien at first.  See if these reactions are not likely to arise in your mind in BOTH situations. Ready?

“I am not cut out for this.”  or

“This doesn’t feel right.”   or

“I don’t have the time for this.”  or

“I am getting nowhere – nothing is changing” – why bother”,

or

“This is a great idea some other time  –

today I am just too tired or too busy” or

“such and such is much more important right now” and so on.

Haven’t we all made these excuses to ourselves?

And there are also positive parallels:  For example, in both cases to make any lasting progress you need the same two things, and I will make this idea #6  For either spiritual or physical development, you need: 1) a long range vision clearly in mind and 2) concrete, daily actions that are in line with that long range vision.   Neither spiritual nor physical improvement is something you can just sprinkle onto your life and expect magic. Improvement in either area takes time, it takes patience, it takes hard work and perseverance, and it takes coaching.  Both require a proper set of priorities!

Anyway, in addition to my regular jobs of real estate and pro-life work, I became a certified personal trainer, and was hired as a personal fitness trainer at a local gym.  And I did this to gain credibility, so that I could launch a website presenting the interesting parallels between faith and fitness, as well as offering fitness consulting online.   My hope was to encourage people focused solely on their physical health, to see that spiritual muscles need exercise too.  After all we are not born with spiritual muscles any more than we are born with bulging pecs and six-pack abs.   Somehow we have this idea that you are born with “spiritual genes” or you are not, and that is simply wrong.   As idea #6 outlined, it takes time and practice, just like anything else.

This idea of becoming a certified trainer and starting a website were again not motivated by a desire for financial gain, rather they were a natural response to my passionate interest in fitness and spirituality and a desire to share my ideas with others.

Now for another twist in the road of life.  I did make one career decision based solely on financial gain.   At about this time the value of the real estate I owned had grown considerably, and I thought I could just about retire if I sold my properties, made good investments with the money, and kept to a very tight budget. Great theory!  But I made a bad decision, or was given bad advice, and I made a six digit investment in a company that went bankrupt just weeks later.

The Good Lord sure didn’t want me to retire early!

It turns out it was fortunate that I had followed my passion and become a trainer at a local gym (remember Idea #3 – ideals over income?), because I was the personal trainer for a man who was involved in retail, and he was looking to expand his business.   I liked the imported products he sold, and he was willing to advance the merchandise required without payment upfront.  So I opened up two stores that very year, with no training in retail whatsoever.  I had never even touched a cash register in my life!   I remember when I had my first sale I panicked a bit and thought “What do I do now! – What button do I push?”

But – we survived, and it turned out to be a good choice, as I was able to rather quickly make back the money I had lost, and eventually I established my own retail company, and have opened 35 temporary, seasonal stores over the last 12 years, across 7 states.

Here again I involve the family, and every single one of my nine children and my wife has been involved in opening, running and closing at least some of those stores.  In fact, my 17 year-old paid her own way through Catholic high school and private violin lessons by helping at my store.  I paid her very generously but within legal standards, and she paid all her own school tuition, music lessons, and personal expenses out of her own bank account.  And Dad gets a great tax write off for his business.

It works the same with travel, as I can write off most of my expenses when I go to different countries with the kids or my wife and we buy merchandise for an upcoming store.

This is a key financial advantage to having your own small business – it may be the greatest legal loophole in the entire tax code –  as a business you are allowed to write off any legitimate expense BEFORE you are taxed, whereas as an employee you are taxed first before you even get your paycheck, so certainly before you can spend anything.  The difference in taxable income between the two can be enormous.   While somewhat out of step with this talk, I’ll make this idea #7:  If possible, start your own small business to promote something you are passionate about, and among other things, enjoy substantial tax benefits.

I will wind down my own story with probably my craziest idea…

Another passion of mine is music.  In our house every young child must practice a musical instrument for two years, at which time they can elect to stop playing, switch instruments – whatever they like.   And since I played piano and we had two pianos in the house, I taught piano and basic music theory to most of the kids, one on one.  I found it to be an intimate, intense, and fun form of communication — and you all know, or you will learn, how hard it is to communicate with your teens at all, not to mention make it intimate and fun!  I had found a goldmine of an opportunity to deepen my relationship with each child and wanted to see it grow.

I also felt strongly about the importance of exposing the children to other cultures, particularly through the discipline of learning a foreign language.

But modern american life doesn’t leave much room for these extras, does it?  The kids have to get up early, they have a very long day at school, maybe followed by sports, followed by homework, and I had long days of work…..at the end of the day how much gas is left in the tank?

I was looking for some way to better align my priorities with our daily lifestyle, and one day I had a kind of epiphany – it was actually just after a piano lesson with one of my sons.   If we home-schooled our children instead of putting them in expensive private Catholic schools, we would save the vast bulk of our annual expenses and still give them the religious and moral training we valued.  AND if I rented the home we lived in it would bring in extra income.    Soooo, home school the kids, take them to Europe to live, learn another language (we chose Italian), focus there on musical development, rent my home to help fund the trip and have my assistant at the time continue to manage the other real estate.  As the retail stores were seasonal, we could just skip a year or two. No problem!

What is missing here?  Well, needless to say, the wife and all the kids had to buy into this wild idea, but we did in fact rent our house and move to Europe for about two years.  A terrific experience.  And this whole venture is an example of Idea #8: Be willing to take risks and to be creative in finding ways to keep your core values at the forefront.

Allow me to end by revisiting in a more general way each of those main themes that dominates our lives: Work, Family, and Faith.

To keep priorities straight, I find it essential to regularly contemplate the reason why I am here in the first place.  If I have in mind my ultimate end and purpose, then I can better evaluate the daily steps I am taking that lead me there, or, as the case may be, take me away from my true end.  After all, if you don’t know where you are going, you can’t very well gauge if you are on the right track.

So lets look at Work, Family and Faith with two “lenses” – each of which focuses on our ultimate purpose from a different angle.  The first lens is our original destiny, our nature and purpose before the fall.  The second lens is the example of how Christ lived these areas of work, family, and faith.   So you might say we are considering the ideal of man, by viewing his status before the fall, and the perfection of man, as shown in the life of Christ.  The two, of course, complement each other, and, like two eyes, can help put into greater focus one’s own purpose and thus help in the setting of key priorities.

Let’s start with work.

Lens #1. (The Ideal of Man before the Fall)  Recall that in the Garden of Eden man was expected to work, even before the fall.  So daily labor is divinely planned, and, in a state of perfection, we would still be working – quite a thought!   I think that can be very helpful to contemplate when you get up to go to work each day, as so often it just seems a burden, a daily grind, a distraction from deeper things.   No, work is how we express and develop our very humanity.

Lens#2 (The Perfection of Man in Christ):  Almighty God, creator of all that is, chose to use one human life to reveal himself to us and to show us the perfect man.

And what did that God-man do?  After about 15 years growing up in his family, he apparently worked as a normal carpenter for the next 15 years.  It was only the last 3 years of this life, the last 10%, that he began his public ministry.

What does this tell us?   It tells us a very very great deal.  About half (45%) of his life was committed to professional work, without any miracles or public preaching that we know of.  And we can be absolutely sure that Christ continued his dialogue with his father God right through all that day-to-day responsibilities.  He prayed with and through his daily work.  This leads to idea #9:  Let us never think that professional work is not part of God’s original plan, OR that work is a distraction from our spiritual life.  God himself clearly did not think so, so we cannot.  We can and should bring God into our work, and bring our work to God. 

Now to the second area: family life.

Lens #1: what was our original destiny, before the fall?  To live in a loving community of persons – man, woman, (then children to follow of course), with God – as a family.    In fact, take one step further back, to the trinitarian nature of God: Father, son and holy spirit – it too denotes a community of persons, a kind of divine family.  So the concept of the family not only transcends national or social origins, it predates the fall, and it predates creation itself! How’s that for the lofty stature of the family!  Our families are intended to reflect, though admittedly quite poorly in our fallen state, that loving communion of persons – it is there that all the most important values and virtues are learned and shared..  Nourishing the family, and include God in family life, should clearly be among our highest priorities in life.

I realize I am in the stratosphere of abstraction here, so let’s hazard going from the sublime to the “ridiculous” and propose one concrete resolution you could make:  Don’t worry too much about the expense, (it does not have to be expensive or far away), and resolve to take your family on a wonderful vacation, this year.  And every year.

Now lens #2 – the example of Jesus as regards the family.  As I mentioned earlier, Jesus spent about 15 years growing up in his family, apparently without much notice in the community.   Again, about  half of his life being…first a helpless baby – in diapers! – Then a toddler, then a young child, then an adolescent.   What does this tell us?  A very very great deal.  If God made normal family life such a priority during his one, brief life on earth, we should too.

And the last consideration, what about our faith?

It might look as if I have let you off the hook…”Hey – Didn’t he say 45% work, 45% family, and that leaves just a nice comfortable little percentage for faith, right?  I can do that, I do that already…I’m doing just fine – I don’t need to change a thing!

Well now, just hold on.  We need to look at this more closely.

When it comes to actual spiritual or even religious activities, you and I probably tend to put these things on the “Wish List”, the “To Do” list, at the end of all our other more pressing activities.  This usually means we never get to them – am I right?  They are one more demand on our time, and usually, as mentioned earlier, we tend to let the urgent overwhelm the really important.

We tend to see life, pretty much, as one giant juggling act.  We have so many demands to juggle:  “hold down a full time job”, or another: “earn enough to support the family needs,” and “dinner with the family,” and “church on sunday”; and “fix the kitchen sink”; and “get daughter to skating practice on Wednesdays”; and “go fishing with my buddy this weekend” and (most important)- “watch the Pats, and Bruins, and Celtics, and RedSox” – OK, I got this, OK …

But then comes this voice of conscience deep within: ”Hey, guy, you need to do more about your spiritual life!”  And you submissively but naively answer, “Yea, that’s probably true, I do…ah..OK…I’ll join the Knights of Columbus…and show up for Nocturnal Adoration….and be on the parish council, and be a eucharistic minister…

What is going on here?  What is going to happen?  If I was acting this out, trying to juggle all these balls, very very soon I would, of course, start dropping balls all over the place.  If you stack on new church activities, it is inevitably going to force out other things at work or in the family.   Life is, after all, a zero sum game – meaning: Whatever you add to one area, you have to take from another.

Or is it?

Allow me to suggest we have this ALL WRONG.   Authentic human life, as it is meant to be lived, is not a zero sum game.

This leads to idea #10: What God wants from you and from me is not a few more church activities crammed into our busy day.  Nor is he primarily interested in us following the rules of his church, though of course we should do so as best we can.  What He most wants is relationship, communion.  He wants our love.

Now love is the furthest thing from a zero sum game as you can get – after all, the more you give it away,  the more it grows!   And, miracle of miracles, the more love grows in your life, the more room there is for it.  This dynamic makes sense, as God is Love, and God is infinite, so Love is infinite.

From this perspective then, just adding more activities, even laudable church activities, might in fact do very little to deepen our interior life, our relationship with our Creator.  Doing too much, even if they are charitable or religious activities, could even diminish our ability to live in loving relationship with God. In a word, prayer must come before volunteerism, relationship before activism.

So we can finally consider the third main area, namely faith, from the perspective of lens #1 – Man’s life before the fall.  Man was destined to live in constant, uninterrupted communion with his Creator.

To explore this I have to back up a bit.   Quite a bit, actually.  How old is the universe, as far as we know?  13.7 Billion years old.  And life was started on this planet a little under 4 billion years ago, finally culminating in the astonishing creature called man.   Each of us is a collection of about 37 trillion cells, each of which is complex beyond our comprehension, all working in precise coordination and balance and interdependence— in order to….

…Well, in order to do what?  Because after all, the miracle of life (and it IS a miracle – remember we are just a collection of inanimate, dead molecules – mostly just hydrogen, carbon, and oxygen atoms – those are the main three, which somehow become self conscious and self replicating creatures), –  this miracle of life is shared with millions of other creatures who can also move, they have the delight of all five senses, they mate and live in community, they have at least basic forms of consciousness and language.  What can we do that is really different from the animals?

Again….humans are here in order to do what?  Let me suggest that the crowning glory of the universe as we know it is the creation of a physical being who…  could …live in a loving dialogue with its creator, with God, in a word…to pray!  That was our original destiny in the Garden that was supposed to last to the end of time, that is what creation was pulsing towards across all those billions of years.   Your and my ability to pray is apparently worth 13.7 billion years of divine anticipation, and divine preparation.

I hope you feel special.  You should!  And I hope this is an idea which will you allow to have consequences in your life, as it has in mine…

It means prayer is not an extra in life, it is not just for priests and pastors, or for the idle, or for the desperate.  Prayer is the raison d’être for our very existence.  It is not something we just do in church, it is not just formal awkward phrases we cast heavenward when we need something, it is meant to permeate every activity, naturally, like an ongoing conversation with your closest friend.

Now of course we are on the other side of the fall, and these lovely abstractions sure don’t fit our reality.  Let’s face it, prayer is often unnatural, it is hard, it is often empty and boring.   But if we at least understand its importance as a core value, its intended purpose in the created order, we can work towards making it a higher priority even when it is hard and seems unrewarding.   On this side of the Fall, everything that is really valuable is often really hard.  And when we do start to pray daily, the payoff is enormous.  Your life will begin to change.

Yes, we still have to juggle various demands on our time, that never stops.  But we don’t have to feel pulled in opposite directions – between what we think of as the secular world with family and work over here, and the spiritual world, with religious and faith matters over there.  Idea #11: We are called to live a unified life, in which we know our main reason for being is to love and communicate with God as our Father,  during all our activities – whether work, or faith, or family.  It is this interior dialogue that unifies our existence, not outer activities.   Activities, whether in family life, professional work, or faith will constantly change, but this interior dialogue remains.  That is what it means to live a unity of life.

Now consider, briefly, lens #2 – the life of Christ:  Almost all of his years spent, at least outwardly, on family and professional work.  But is there any doubt, as I mentioned before, that he was in constant dialogue with God the Father and with God the Holy Spirit, whether he was enjoying family life or hard at work?  Of course not.  That is the template for each human person, for you and for me.

But let us again confront hard reality –  we can sometimes see our faith as vague, remote, or even as just a set of static beliefs.  “Sure I’m a Catholic, I go to Mass on Sunday and I believe most of what the church teaches.” Done.

Here is a challenging parallel…

Suppose I claim I am an active football player, and you, quite naturally, ask where I practice, and what team I play with.  And I answer: “Ah, I actually don’t do any of those things, I just believe in the rules of the game.  In fact, ALL of them!” I very proudly announce, “AND on Sunday, every Sunday!, I watch a game for an hour. Impressive, eh?  AND I am even on the committee to help plan the schedule.  I am soooome football player, aren’t I?! “

Am I a football player?   No… I am not a player at all.  I am, truthfully, a mere spectator, and maybe a good one, maybe a faithful one, but not… even part… of the game.

Allow me to suggest that the real “game” of the Christian life is recovering this interior dialogue with God.  That does not mean adding any new social activities to our lives.  But it does mean at least some time set aside each day to re-learn how to talk to God, in a word, to pray.  Try it.  Set aside 20 – 30 minutes a day, 10 or 15 minutes in the morning and evening, and see if it doesn’t change your life from the inside out.

So what I am suggesting is two types of prayer: a fixed time when you “practice” being alone with God, and then an ongoing conversation with Him during your busy, secular life.

       Idea #12 then: “Make personal, daily, silent prayer among the highest priorities in your life.  Prayer is the primary reason you exist”. 

As to how to pray one on one, let me just say it should be natural – give thanks, complain, explain, ask for help – but never, ever put on a mask, or try to be something you are not.  Don’t be eloquent, don’t be pious.  Invite God into your normal, daily thoughts, emotions, and activities.  He wants to share them with you.

In conclusion, I realize my own story, especially my career path is a bit unusual.  I am reminded of those construction trucks you see on highway projects… “Construction Vehicle – Do Not Follow”.  After all, if you do, you might end up in a ditch somewhere.   Maybe I should have something like that on my back, saying “Erratic Career Path – Do Not Follow.”

So the particulars of my own career may not be transferable, but my hope is that at least some of the ideas I’ve shared will be seen as relevant to your own situation, that maybe one or two ideas will take root and have real consequences in your life.

Each of us has to decide on our core values, on our true priorities, and then see if our day-to-day lives line up with those values.  So by all means forget any of the particulars I have shared – but sit down…reflect on your own core values… and begin the life-long adventure of trying to put them into practice amid the clutter and chaos of daily life.

Best of luck on the journey.

Summary of Ideas from

“Keeping Priorities Straight:  Integrating Faith, Family, and Work

#1  May I have the courage and integrity to allow my key ideas to have consequences in my life.  In other words, may I strive to identify my core values and then work to align my lifestyle and daily behavior with those ideas.  If I do that, I am keeping priorities straight.

#2  Be unapologetically pro-life, and encourage your kids to confront and think about this core value and to act upon the consequences that follow from it.

#3 Don’t be afraid to put convictions above comfort, ideals over income.

#4 Whenever possible, involved your kids in your work.

#5 Work is good for kids – their minds and their bodies.  Kids can work better, and longer, and at younger ages than you think.  In today’s culture we spoil kids to the detriment of their character.

#6  For either spiritual or physical development, you need: 1) a long range vision clearly in mind and 2) concrete, daily actions that are in line with that long range vision.   Neither spiritual nor physical improvement is something you can just sprinkle onto your life and expect magic. Improvement in either area takes time, it takes patience, it takes hard work and perseverance, and it takes coaching.

#7  If possible, start your own small business to promote something you are passionate about, and enjoy, among other things, substantial tax benefits.

#8  Be willing to take risks and to be creative in finding ways to keep your core values at the forefront.

#9  Let us never think that work is not part of God’s original plan, or that work is a distraction from our spiritual life.  God himself clearly did not think so, so we cannot.  We can and should bring God into our work, and bring our work to God.

#10  What God wants from you and from me is not a few more church activities crammed into our busy day.  Nor is he primarily interested in us following the rules of his church, though of course we should do so.  What He most wants is relationship, communion.  He wants our love.

#11  We are called to live a unified life, in which we know our main reason for being is to love and communicate with God as our Father,  during all our activities – whether work, or faith, or family.  It is this interior dialogue that unifies our existence, not outer activities.   Activities, whether in family life, professional work, or faith will constantly change, but this interior dialogue remains.

#12 “Make personal, daily, silent prayer among the highest priorities in your life. It is the primary reason you exist”.

For further dialogue or to obtain copies of “Keeping Priorities Straight: Integrating Faith, Family, and Work” contact Paul Swope at pointstoponderllc@gmail.com

And there are also positive parallels:  For example, in both cases to make any lasting progress you need the same two things, and I will make this idea #6  For either spiritual or physical development, you need: 1) a long range vision clearly in mind and 2) concrete, daily actions that are in line with that long range vision.   Neither spiritual nor physical improvement is something you can just sprinkle onto your life and expect magic. Improvement in either area takes time, it takes patience, it takes hard work and perseverance, and it takes coaching.  Both require a proper set of priorities!

Anyway, in addition to my regular jobs of real estate and pro-life work, I became a certified personal trainer, and was hired as a personal fitness trainer at a gym.  And I did this to

Duration: 31 minutes
Audience: Roman Catholic (live talk was given to a Knights of Columbus group)

Transcript:

Nearly everyone of us who is a father knows that fatherhood is probably the most important job in our entire life.   While the pressures of professional work can be demanding and even seem to take priority for a time, we would almost all agree that what we most want to be remembered for, more than being a good employer or employee, is raising good kids.

We have only one chance to raise our children well, and yet, for something so vitally important, we probably don’t take as much time as we should to reflect on what we could do to better.

The premise of this reflection is very straightforward:

If we want to be a good father to our sons and daughters, we need to be good son to our father, our heavenly father.

Five parallels come to mind, that are worth exploring.

Idea #1:

Just as it is important that a father share his professional work with his children,

So too it is important that a father share professional work with his heavenly father.

I’m not sure if the term is still as common, but Derry used to be called a “bedroom community” – meaning most people who live there commute to work far away, such as in Boston.  But even if we don’t work that far away, modern life does, unfortunately, tend to separate our work from our families.  In fact, there is the danger that young children can see their Dads as mysterious beings, who disappear every morning before they are seen, and return late in the day – exhausted, maybe even grumpy, and that this daily ritual is somehow connected with why they have a roof over their heads and food on the table.  They are told they should obey and be grateful to this big guy, but they don’t really get it.

To make matters worse, during the peak of their day these young boys do see very active men as teachers and coaches, practicing all kinds of skills and virtues.   Small wonder Dads have lost some of their prestige in this culture and within the family.  It’s not so much our personal fault as it is a lack of opportunity for kids to work with, and for, and around, their Dads.

So, to the extent you can, let your kids in on the secret of your work.  Take them with you occasionally, or better, involve them somehow.  Let them see you at your best in the professional world, carrying important responsibilities, not just at home relaxing. Heaven forbid someone ask one of our kids at school what his Dad does, and, after reflection, he pipes up “Oh, he’s a couch potato!”  Ouch.

Now the parallel with Faith: Do we actively bring our concerns about our professional work to God, or do we somehow think that is inappropriate?  Do we talk to God when we are at work?   Put another way, do we bring God into our workplace, and do we bring our workplace to God when at prayer?

It might be helpful to remember that Almighty God chose to become a human being only one time in all of history, and that person spent most of his life, doing what?

Working!  Only a small fraction of his life was spent on his public ministry, preaching and performing miracles.  Apparently he worked as a carpenter, without any miracles or grand speeches or fuss.   That tells us a lot about the value of work in God’s eyes, and why we should be confident he wants very much to share that part of our life with Him, as that is exactly how he chose to spend most of His time on earth with us. The realm of work and the realm of prayer should not be separate worlds.

Idea #2 – Just as fathers should spend time alone with their kids away from the normal routine,

So too fathers should find time alone with God.

If you look back over your own childhood, I can almost guarantee that your most vivid family memories come from vacations – those special times of being away together.

Sure, it can be hard to make the time or meet the expense of a vacation, but it could be just going camping locally.  The effort to make it happen is worth it.

When you do this, you are showing, without even saying it, that your kids are not an afterthought, or a burden on your busy day and your professional advancement, but rather they are your priority, your joy.

On the faith side, I think if we are honest, we can sometimes look at making time for God as a burden, a distraction from what really matters.   But once a year, make the time to go “on vacation” with God.  Make an annual retreat, for at least a weekend.   I can tell you that for me, vacations with the family are definitely a highlight of my year, but so is my weekend alone with God on a silent retreat.  Try it.

And really, this “time away” with God should be, on a much smaller scale, part of your everyday routine, taking the time for private, personal prayer.  But more on that later.

Idea #3

Just as we want our children to respect their earthly father’s authority,

So too we must set the example by striving to live under our heavenly Father’s authority.

A common reason kids rebel as teenagers is they view their parents, or authority figures in general, as either unfair, or hypocritical.  But kids are not as likely to rebel if they see you living under the same rules they are taught to live under.  In essence, let your kids see that we are all in this together, we are all unfinished products, and we all need to obey the same guidelines of moral behavior which come from the same divine authority.

Here are a few challenging examples, again paralleling demands of Faith with the challenges of succeeding as fathers:

-We won’t have credibility insisting our kids attend religious instruction if we are not faithful in getting to church every Sunday.

-We won’t have credibility insisting our teens never touch alcohol or cigarettes if we over-indulge ourselves.

-We won’t have credibility telling the kids they watch too much TV and internet, if we then retire with our wives to late night television in bed every night.

-We won’t have credibility demanding our teens drive cautiously, if we take out our own frustrations on the road.

-We won’t have credibility exhorting our kids to study hard and love reading, if they never see us reading or studying.

-We won’t have credibility insisting our daughters dress modestly,if we then gawk admiringly at women who dress immodestly.

-We can’t hope our kids will grow up loving the Christian faith if they do not see us as happy because of that faith.

-We cannot hope our kids will be men and women of prayer, if we do not pray.

-Lastly, we can’t hope our kids will stay close to their faith if they are immersed in the opposite world-view the vast majority of their waking hours, year after year.  I am referring to the influence of television and public schools.

How can we be so naive as to think our kids will not absorb this toxic world view if we allow them to marinate in it most of every day?

I will share two personal experiences on this:

One of my best decisions as a father was to raise our family without a television.   It fosters much more conversation among family members, motivates kids to find more productive activities, and of course avoids an onslaught of very harmful ideas and role models from being brought right into the bosom of the family.  I know it may sound extreme to live without television, but I can only say not one of my kids has ever complained, nor has one of us ever felt deprived.

Then there is the tough question of schooling.  Again, I can only share my own experience.  My wife and I moved to Derry in no small part because it had a solid elementary Catholic school attached to the thriving parish of St. Thomas.  We did indeed send all 9 kids through St. Thomas Aquinas school.  So far so good. But what then?   My wife and I knew Pinkerton Academy, the local public high school, had a great reputation, and it does have wonderful resources.   But we were, frankly, appalled at the influence it had on the first two children we sent there.  It is not that secular schools directly attack Catholic teaching, but rather that they present the non-religious and sometimes anti-religious view as the sensible one, the cool one, the intelligent one, the right one – from the course material, to the teachers to, and most importantly, to the kids.   At that age kids are starting to take their standard of behavior not from their parents, but from their piers.   Anyway, we were alarmed enough to make the sacrifice to send the next two children to a good Catholic school in Massachusetts, where they thrived, even though it required some boarding.   The next child pleaded with us to be able to make his own way at Pinkerton, and we decided to respect that wish.  Well, he became a strong advocate of the new atheism, and even set up a blog to evangelize his viewpoint.

I am not saying there is a direct cause and effect relationship, but of the three who went to Pinkerton, two have left the church entirely.  The contrast with the other six is obvious, and seeing the faith flourish in our family today, where we pray the Rosary together as a family for example, is one of the greatest joys of my life.

Now this is where living out the consequences of our Faith is hard, where it hurts.  But if we are not willing to make sacrifices for our faith, especially for our kids, do we really have faith at all?   For us this meant that almost half of our entire annual budget goes to Catholic education.   We are convinced that, despite the very real flaws of small Catholic schools, the investment is worth every penny.  As imperfect Catholics and imperfect parents, we desperately need the school – its curriculum, teachers, and students to support the values we are trying to impart to our kids.

Idea #4

Just as being vulnerable with our children will deepen our relationship with them,

So too being vulnerable with our Heavenly father will deepen our relationship with Him.

Now, I am not saying we should share our weaknesses, our vulnerabilities, with our children all the time.  But selectively, especially with older children, we need to help them see us as “three-dimensional.”

Let me give a personal anecdote that will illustrate the point:  A couple years ago I decided to visit one of my older kids who lives out of state.   We went on an overnight trip together and had to find a hotel.  While looking, I shared that when I used to travel a lot for business, I would call the hotels ahead of time and try to find one that would remove the television from the room, because in those pre-internet days there were the porn channels, that had teasers for free, and it was hard not to look.  I said that almost no hotel would remove a TV, so I started the habit of covering the TV with a towel when I arrived, and even putting a picture of my family on top, to help me stay focused on what really mattered.  And I admitted it was very hard and that I did not always succeed.

I did not give the anecdote much thought, but after I returned home my son called me, shared that he was struggling with looking at porn, and he asked if I would be one of his “partners” when he signed up with an internet filter service called Covenant Eyes.  If you don’t know about Covenant Eyes, I highly recommend it.

Anyway, of course I agreed, and we resolved to touch bases every week by phone.  It led to long, open discussions of up to an hour, every week, for a year.  All because I was willing to share a vulnerability of my own.

Again, this should be done selectively, but let’s not put on a mask all the time as “Mr. Tough Guy,” or “Mr. Perfect” so that our children really never get to know us.

On the faith side, for some reason I think we men seem to think we need to play the strong guy even with God.  We don’t want to share our weaknesses (as if we could hide them!).   Or we think we need to impress God, (as if we could).  Or we think we need to make formal reports or speeches to Him, as if he was a scorekeeper or a taskmaster.   But keep in mind the only people in the Gospels that made Jesus angry were those who thought they were in full control, who knew the rules and followed them – in short, the “good guys.”

I heard it put this way recently:  “God flees from those who try to raise themselves up to Him; but he rushes to those who bow down before Him.”

God will not open his life and his love to us, unless, and until, we are willing to really be open and honest with him – about the good, and the bad, and the ugly in our lives.

This of course brings us to the beautiful sacrament of Confession.   Go to confession, ideally every month, and at least invite your kids every time you go.  Show them it is a priority in your life, and that you need it as much as they do, maybe more.

Idea #5 – the last point

Just as greater intimacy with your children requires giving them personalized, one-on-one attention

So too greater intimacy with your heavenly Father requires personalized, one-on-one communication.

I’m willing to bet one of the most moving and rewarding experiences of your entire life, and certainly as a father, is when a child comes to you alone and says “Dad, can we talk…?”  and he or she shares a deeply personal problem or crisis and seeks your advice.  Right?   It is a beautiful moment of intimacy, vulnerability, dialogue, and compassion.   In fact, if you remember nothing else from these reflections, I hope you will remember this: this personal encounter is perhaps what your kids need more than anything else in their entire lives, no matter their age.

What I would also suggest is that a personal encounter with our heavenly Father is probably what you and I need more than anything in our entire life.

Let’s be honest, for many Catholics this idea of an intimate, personal dialogue with God is foreign, and even our idea of what it means to be a member of the Catholic church is very limited.

Consider this parallel: Suppose your child came to you one day and declared: “Dad, I get it – family life can be summed up as follows”: One – Follow a few basic rules; Two, make an occasional appearance at the house; and, Three, chip in with paying for some household items.  We would be horrified, right?  Could anything be further from the reality of a true vision of a loving, intimate family life?  But isn’t that how we can look at our life as church members: first, church is a place of rules, of what you can and canont do,  second, we need to make a Sunday appearance, and third, we need to donate to the collection basket?  We should be horrified!  Nothing could be further from the reality of the Christian faith where we dare to call Almighty God, Abba, or Daddy.

The truth is, God is a much more patient, and forgiving, and doting father than we are and he longs for intimate communication with each one of us.  And He also knows that is what we most need to find real happiness.

Maybe you are starting to tune out at this point.  Another exhortations to pray more! Ugh.  We tend to leave that prayer stuff to our wives, or our mothers….it’s not really a guy thing…

So, in these very few minutes left I want to try to leave you with a different way of looking at prayer…..

To do this, I’ll call on two very different concepts of truth – namely, the truths of inspired scripture and the insights of modern science.

First, let us imagine ourselves back in the Garden of Eden, before the fall.  The poetic details of a talking snake or a forbidden apple are not important, nor do we need to believe them.  What IS important is that there, in that unspeakably beautiful garden, a man and woman came into existence who were intended to live in a constant dialogue with God, to be loving children of a perfectly loving and ever-present Father.  There they would dwell, enjoying all imaginable sensual and spiritual delights, without sin, without suffering, as a family, forever.  The families that were supposed to flourish from the union of that first man and woman would be full of joy and laughter, and fill the earth, until, we must assume at some point they would ascend to another realm.

Yet we find ourself in a very different situation.  What on earth happened!?  Sin, and sorrow, and pain, and loss and disappointment in all directions, and, most tragically, Almighty God , Creator of all that is, can seem almost a figment of our imagination.

Now let us turn to science to reflect on our evolutionary journey….

Our universe is 13.7 billion years old, and in the beginning matter was compressed into a single point.   When it exploded, atoms were hurled into the void in all directions.  Gravity eventually brought together clusters of matter, which coalesced into galaxies, stars, and suns, and planets.  Our tiny planet was formed 4.5 billion years ago, and very quickly this strange thing called life began, about 3.8 billion years ago.  Simple life forms at first, but eventually a veritable explosion of seemingly random living creatures, complexifying in astonishing ways.

Consider that even the most complex life forms are made of quite simple compounds.  Humans are 99% oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, phosphorus, and a pinch of calcium.   We are, literally, just a handful of dust.

Somehow that handful of dust is put together to form fantastically complex cells, each with DNA codes with millions of combinations of microscopic data that can replicate in mere minutes, perfectly.   These cells interact and specialize on a scale it is impossible to comprehend, and in your body there are 37 trillion cells!

But many animals share this staggering complexity.
so what makes humans so special?   After all, many animals enjoy all five senses, furthermore, they also mate, they sleep, they live in community, and some have basic forms of consciousness and even language.   Almost everything you and I do every day is shared with animals.

Except…except – we were created to be conscious, not only of ourselves and our world, but of our Creator, and to be able to turn to him and say “Thank you” and “I love you.”   We were created to be in loving dialogue with the creator of the universe.   Love was planted in the human heart not just for each other but for Him as well – our original nature was to live in love on both the horizontal, earthly plane, along with the vertical, divine plane.

In fact, THAT is the highest purpose for which the universe was created.  Just maybe there are other story lines in other parts of the universe, but clearly God wanted no other storyline in this entire observable universe – because creating conscious beings, who live forever, fashioned out of nothing but dead matter, just a few simple compounds, is enough of a story, isn’t it?

Is 3 billion years a long time for life to evolve if the end product is billions upon billions of newly generated eternal beings, (you are one of them) each of which was destined to live in bliss with the Creator God?  No, it is not a long time.  Relative to eternity it is no time at all.  The universe is actually young, and the story of human life probably just beginning.

But remember, the essential difference between us and all other life forms is…… what?   The ability to dialogue with God, in other words, to pray!  That is what creation was pulsing towards across all those billions of years.   Your and my ability to pray is apparently worth 13.7 billion years of divine anticipation, and divine preparation.    Putting it most bluntly, if we do not pray we are ignoring the highest purpose for the creation of humans and, from all that we know, of the universe itself.

So prayer is not an extra in life, it is not just for the priests, or for the idle, or for the desperate, or for women.  It is not something we just do in church, it is meant to permeate every activity, naturally, like an ongoing conversation with your closest friend, or like the loving dialogue between a father and his son.

I hope this way of looking at prayer will impact your life, as it has mine.

Now there is good news and bad news about prayer in our current condition. Let’s cover the bad first:

The bad news is that in our fallen state, we do not like to pray, we do not know how to pray, and prayer does not seem to be very important or effective.  So don’t take it as a personal failing that you might find prayer boring, empty, even foolish.   Remember, the first humans rejected that vision of constant communion with God, and we have spiraled downward ever since.  It is just no longer natural to us.   And God is now very often mysterious, obscure, invisible.

The Good News is this:  Despite our weakened state, and our fixation on the horizontal dimension of life, we CAN still live with a vertical dimension, a dimension that brings immeasurable joy and peace.  We CAN re-establish, although not perfectly, that Father-son relationship.

Furthermore, we can live in dialogue with our Creator no matter what we are doing.  Prayer was not intended to be restricted to church activities, or to formal, memorized phrases.  It is available to the busiest of professional men at the peak of their career.

To understand what prayer is meant to be like we just need to look at the Gospels, and I urge you to read the New Testament every day, even if for just 10 minutes. You’ll see that most of Jesus’ encounters are wonderful one on one dialogues –  You have Nicodemus, the cripple by the pool, the leper, the Syro-Phoenician woman, Zacchaeus, the Samaritan woman at the well, and many, many others.  Those encounters are personal, not corporate; intimate, not formal; individual, not public; practical, not abstract.   That is the kind of relationship, the kind of prayer he wants with you.

And note once again, the delicious parallel between faith and fatherhood:  What God wants with you is exactly what you want with your own children! So let us, soon, knock softly on God’s door, and whisper “Dad, can we talk?”

As for the mechanics of prayer:  I suggest sitting alone and starting that conversation with God, every day, for at least 15 minutes.  Twice a day is even better.  Any less than 15 minutes and you are not likely to develop a sense of relationship.  A relationship with your creator is like any relationship between persons – you have to put time and effort in before there is much reward or growth.

What do you pray about?  St. Josemaria Escriva, the founder of Opus Dei, put it this way “To pray is to talk with God.  About what?  About him, about yourself: joys, sorrows, successes and failures, great ambitions, daily worries – even your weaknesses! And acts of thanksgiving, and petitions…In short, to get to know him and to get to know yourself -“to get acquainted.”

So there are really two parts to prayer – the quiet time alone with our Father, and an ongoing conversation as we go about our busy day.

If we do this, we are rebuilding the first and foundational breach in the relationship between God and Man.  The best way to set a Christian example as a father is not stepping into the political or social fray against an intensely secular culture that is toxic to the values of our faith and family.  We will not save our society with activism, but only with interior renewal.  We must work to repair that internal breach, namely the loss of communion between ourselves and our loving Father, a communion that was intended to be the crowning glory of this created universe.  I hope that makes you feel special.  It should.

Be a better son to your heavenly Father, and you can be 100% sure that you will be a much better father to your own sons and daughters.

This talk discusses various sexual themes, and is best suited to mature audiences.

Transcript:

An Understanding and Experience of Human Sexuality – One Man’s Journey

           The main motivation in writing this reflection is to share the good news about human sexuality that I have personally experienced in my own marriage of 34 years.  The culture I grew up in had always depicted sex as suited to the young, in fact something to be enjoyed as much a possible before marriage, because after marriage, well, it would become monotonous, routine, and, from what I could gather from the insinuations in movies and on TV, it would pretty much peter out.  In fact, my own sexual encounters before marriage did seem to support this idea – thrilling at first but they grew stale fairly quickly. But once married I found the exact opposite – marital intimacy actually gets better and better and better.  I have come to realize that sex was designed to last for a lifetime, and to improve as the years pass.  And I don’t mean in some emotional sense – I mean in every way.  I would shout this from the rooftops if I could!

             So this reflection is in two parts: My understanding and experiences of sex before marriage, then my experience after marriage and the new ideas it led me to develop regarding human sexuality.

PART ONE:  Wandering in the wilderness

  Growing up I had no instruction about sex, and had to find my own way.  Like many parents, my mother and father did not want to discuss the topic.  They did not even give me “the talk.”   I only recall my mother handing me a thin book and saying I needed to read it and ask her if I had any questions.  “Sure Mom!”   Yeah, right, like a 10-year- old boy is going to discuss a sex book with his mother!

I recall a few drawings of anatomy, and mention of love between a man and woman, but all I really retained was that when a couple had sex, they lay together, and a tiny seed passed from the man’ s penis into the woman.  Was this what all the excitement was about?!   I imagined how it happened: the couple lay side by side, motionless, and this single, tiny seed somehow wiggled across to the woman.  And they would look at each other after a while, and say “time to get up!” and off they would go.  Hmpf.  I could do without that.  Adults were strange people!

      Needless to say, this was not a solid grounding in the topic.  So parents — talk more openly with your young children!

In the years from 10 – 14 I recall being fascinated by girls, but they inhabited a world I never dared to enter.   Unfortunately, the only sex education I received was from men’s magazines, and a pornographic “novel” that was circulating at school.  I was a bit nauseated by the stories, but strangely attracted too. 

My first “girlfriend” came at the age of 14, when she was only 13.   From my side it was a romantic and noble relationship.  I enjoyed weaving a fantasy in which my girlfriend was wounded in a futuristic battle and I was the hero, saving my beloved from near death, taking tender care of her, foraging for food and helping to heal her wounds.  It was all very chivalrous and tender and chaste.   I find it telling that despite my exposure to only bestial views of sex from magazines and peers, my inner instincts regarding the opposite sex remained chivalrous and pure. 

This girl, at a mere 13 years of age, clearly had moved way beyond fantasy before she met me.  One night, she bluntly asked, “Do you want to F*** me?”   Wow.  What was a tender boy to say to that?   So I gallantly replied, probably in a register about an octave above my normal high voice at that age: “What? Uh, I don’t know. I mean, uh, what do you mean? Uh, yeah, I guess so.”

         So she initiated me into real sex, at her home, on her mother’s bed.   I don’t recall it very well, except that it was awkward, and not exactly a peak human experience.   I again had the thought, “Is this what all the fuss is about?”

But rather inexplicably, I also had another thought: “Sex is something special.”  In fact, I recall thinking the word “sacred.”   Even though I had never been to a church in my life, nor considered spiritual topics in general, nor could I have given a very precise idea of what I was talking about.  But I knew I did not want to be with that girl again, or any such girl for the foreseeable future. 

I kept that resolve until the middle of my college years.    At that time I started reading D.H. Lawrence, and in his writings he raised sexual encounters to an exalted, almost spiritual state. That vision spoke to me, and I decided it was time for me to try that out – to sally forth and unite the sexual and the spiritual.  This was a “theory” of human sexuality that I could put into “practice” and embrace enthusiastically.  I thought I had the best of both worlds.

Looking back, I had been frosting my sexual cake with merely spiritual sprinkles.  The abstract theory was all very nice, but there remained physical realities with which to deal.  The biological fundamentals of sex had not changed, and in my senior year of college, my girlfriend of the time became pregnant.  By then I had experience with all the various forms of birth control, the plugs and drugs and latex, but effectiveness hinges on user compliance, and perfect compliance among teenagers and college students is notoriously low. Passion and planning have never been good bed-mates.

Perhaps surprisingly, rather than being angry or negative, my honest reaction was of deep joy.  The thought that I was a father was utterly exhilarating.  I walked around on cloud nine for a time.  Joy was like an instinctive light that broke through, for a time, even the darkest circumstantial clouds.

Of course after just a couple of days I came down to earth and had to confront the very harsh realities of how unprepared both my girlfriend and I were to become parents, and marriage was out of the question.   With abortion as the quickest and seemingly easiest option, we decided together to terminate the pregnancy.   I took her to the clinic, helped pay for it, held her hand in the waiting room and in the outpatient room afterwards, and…it was over.  We were quiet, sad, and somber, but both thought this would put the experience behind us.

  I learned another truth first hand – one reason abortion is often chosen is to keep a relationship together, to get things back to the way they were before – but this very often does not happen.  You cannot go back.  My relationship with the girl was never the same. 

For my part this was not a great hardship. I did not feel guilt about our decision, and in fact did not give it a great deal of thought.  Graduation was not far ahead, and it was time for both of us to move on.

After graduation I decided to hitch-hike around the world, to see and experience cultures outside the familiar.  In Europe I had a number of sexual relationships, and I like to think I always treated women with respect, and there were relationships of real tenderness, and yes, sexual ecstasy.  At the same time, I could not deny that sexual desire often over-rode other considerations or justified decisions I regretted later.  There were times when I felt used, times when I knew I was being manipulative, times when we both knew the relationship was a sham.   I was “sowing my wild oats” as it is euphemistically called, but sowing other seeds as well, seeds of doubt that I was really maturing as a person or that these brief relationships were leading anywhere.

It was in Europe that I happened upon a book that explained the details of the suction curettage abortion my girlfriend had undergone.  Although I had graduated Summa Cum Laude from an Ivy League school, I did not know anything about abortion – I had just heard it removed a clump of tissue.  But as I learned the details, it began to dawn on me the magnitude of what I had done.

And the magnitude of what I was doing, because at that moment I was traveling through Switzerland with a young woman.   We had met while I worked at a hotel in Germany, and she had a wealthy German uncle who was willing to loan her his BMW for a couple of weeks.  She invited me to tour Switzerland with her.  We were not very close, but who could turn down such an offer? 

What I had read lead me to reject abortion as an option, but what would I do now if the woman I was traveling with became pregnant?   As I saw it, there were only four inescapable options: 1) Marry a woman with whom I had little in common; 2) be the ultimate coward and simply abandon her to deal with the problem alone; 3) leave her but somehow offer to help pay for the child’s upbringing or support her in putting the child up for adoption, or 4) abort the child.

It also dawned on me that the only thing that had prevented one of those four options from become a horrifying reality with any of the relationships I had had was faith that birth control would never fail.   But it had already failed, at least as user error, and I had already consented to terminate the life one child. 

This led me to reflect on the bill of goods that I had been sold by the modern culture, which from all sides seemed to promote the idea of “sex without consequences.”   I had accepted the idea that waiting for marriage was a completely outdated idea, thanks to birth control.  Now you could find a good sex partner before you married, and have all kinds of sexual highs before settling down.  But in that culture of sexual freedom, a child was not a thing to celebrate but to fear; children were not a gift, but a danger; they were not the fruit of sex but its enemy.  This whole approach to “free” sex, which up until that time I had accepted as progressive, now struck me as deeply flawed.

I continued to travel, and I even continued to be sexually active for a time, but I was absolutely certain that for me abortion could not be an option, and my faith in modern society, which embraced abortion so passionately, was collapsing.   And I was beginning to confront the obvious option no one likes to mention that would prevent any of those four options from coming into play: stop having sex until I was married and ready to welcome a child.

I decided to return to the States, and felt the need to find my college girlfriend and tell her I was deeply sorry for supporting the idea of putting her through an abortion.   And I learned she was not advancing nicely in a career somewhere, but instead was in a mental institution, having had an emotional break-down shortly after our relationship in college.  I will forever remember that long train ride to see her and the brief time we spent together.   She did not see the abortion as a factor in her breakdown, but the last words she said to me I cannot forget:  “A piece of me has been missing ever since we were together, and I don’t know how to get it back.”

Less than a year after that experience, I was to meet the woman who was to become my wife, and a whole new chapter in life was to begin.

Looking back over those couple of years of relationships, I found it hard to discover much good that had been gained.

Some would say, as I did for a time, that a I needed to experiment for a while and “get it out of my system” before settling down.   But I did not see how feeding the sexual appetite was succeeding in calming it down.  Quite the contrary.  How exactly does experiencing 10 or 20 different sexual styles help you to be content for life with just one?  Nor did I see in myself or those around me a growing attraction to or appreciation for permanent commitment or having children.  Quite the contrary.

Had I at least learned about the type of person with whom I was sexually compatible?

First, I do not remember a single relationship in which sexual relations were difficult because we were in some mysterious way “incompatible.”   Sexual attraction is not that complicated, and nearly universal.  There were differences of course, but none that seemed relevant in deciding who might be worth marrying.   What I did experience was that sexual experimentation created more problems than it seemed to solve.  Many of the women I dated were dealing with various sexual dysfunctions or phobias due to previous negative experiences.   Sex is powerful, and all it takes is one painful or traumatic encounter to create a deep and long-lasting wound, and the chances for such a negative encounter grow with every new sexual relationship. 

The same applies to the idea of accumulating sexual “skills.”   My experience suggested that emotional and sexual phobias are likely to accumulate much faster than “skills” that will somehow be of use in a marriage.   Nor do the variety of techniques one might have tried with someone else in any way translate into useful knowledge with one’s spouse.

Of course there are cases when the partner is not so much personally incompatible as chronically insensitive, or perhaps even in need of professional help.  But superficial relationships are likely to perpetuate poor behavior, as there is no one to hold the dysfunctional partner accountable, thus there is little motivation to change, and the damage continues on to the next partner.

Because I have been blessed with a happy marriage, some might be tempted to think one can have the best of both worlds – sexual adventures for a couple of years and then settle into matrimonial bliss.   This would be a fatal miscalculation.  I learned that events of the past do not stay in the past.  I will briefly enumerate just four things I brought into the marriage:

Memories.  Memories of what I have done, and with whom, remain, and haunted me for many years.  This applies to the best and the worst experiences.  The worst we can hope to quietly forget, but suppose a particular experience or attribute is superior to what you have with your wife?   We will inevitably compare, and remember, and dissatisfaction can begin to simmer.  It is a fools bargain: The sexual encounter may have been an exciting fling of a weekend, but the temptations to seek it again can eat away at you years later.  And with the internet we can now relocate those “memories” all too easily. 

2) Habits.   You do not wake up on your marriage day and find it easy to be faithful for life.  Old habits die hard, and someone used to trying new partners is much more susceptible to falling into the catastrophe of an affair.  At best the marriage may survive, but the emotional wound to one’s partner is irreparable. 

3) Pornography.   Being exposed to pornography at an early age, I can attest to its power and addictive nature.  The worst part is it is almost certain to follow you even into a wonderful marriage.  I know the gnawing attraction, the virtually unstoppable urge to just click that button on the computer and view those images or videos.   In no way did I find it, as current culture tries to say, a healthy and even helpful addition to one’s sexual life.  Porn is gasoline on the fire of disordered passions, disrupting normal relations between men and women, and disintegrating marriages.

  Like all false promises, the damage done vastly outweighs those intense moments of excitement we think are so compelling at the time.  Recovery is possible, but slow and rarely complete. So be compassionate and understanding of what I can only call a curse if your husband, or wife, is stuck in it.  Attraction to porn is not a judgement on you as a sexual partner or on your marriage. 

4) STDs.  In my case I contracted Herpes before marriage, as well as HPV (Human Papilloma Virus).  HPV usually remains latent and benign, but can, even after decades, resurface, usually causing cervical cancer in women and throat cancer in men.

I was, in fact, diagnosed with Stage IV throat cancer, and was told it was from the HPV infection picked up decades earlier.  Because it was so advanced, for a time I was fairly certain it would be my last illness.  By that point my wife and I had a large and thriving family, and the greatest pain of the entire experience, more than the intense radiation, the surgery, or the chemotherapy, was the thought that I would not be able to see my children as they grew up, married, and had children of their own.  I would lose everything I most cherished, all because I had enjoyed, for a couple of years, the “sexual freedom” of modern life.

It is revealing to contrast all these experiences and consequences that I brought into the marriage against the experience of my wife, who came to the marriage as a virgin.

My wife has never had a painful or unpleasant or embarrassing sexual experience in her life.  My wife has no regrets, no scars, no secrets, no inhibitions, no shame, no diseases, no temptations, no memories to suppress, no compulsions, and no dysfunctions in regards to her sexual life.  At least regarding the sexual landscape, she is completely at peace and happy, and has been since the day she married. 

Whereas my wife entered the marriage completely at ease and without anxiety regarding a commitment for life, I had noticed that the sexual relations I had had with other women seemed to lose their luster fairly quickly.   Based on the trajectory of my past experiences, life-long commitment to one person seemed to portend a dismal sexual future.   I assumed sex would kind of wilt away, but I just hoped I wouldn’t care as much as I got older.

I was in for the greatest surprise of my entire life….

PART TWO – Towards a New Understanding and Practice of Human Sexuality

That sexual relations within marriage did not become stale, or routine, over time was such a surprise to me that I have pondered it across our 34 years of marriage. 

After all, how could the same physical act become stale in a matter of weeks or months on the one hand, as I had experienced before marriage, and only get better across decades on the other, after marriage?

I think most people would answer:  “That’s easy.  It is because you married the person you really love, whereas the others were not “the one”.   I completely reject this view.   It is not a sustained emotional high that undergirds the ecstasy inherent in sex, nor some kind of magical match with one particular person.  We have not been one of those rare couples who seem to fall in love during courtship and stay that way into old age.  Such emotional rapture and consistency is wonderful to behold but extremely rare (I would guess 5% or less of marriages).  There is nothing unique about the emotional intensity or compatibility of my marriage.    

Nor do my wife and I have some kind of special sexual chemistry.   We have had to be patient with one another, to communicate, to learn, and to forgo having things just the way one of us might ideally want.  Nor, as far as I can tell, do we possess higher sex drives than an average couple.

Well then, is it just physical attributes? Trying to remain physically attractive is important, and something we have worked to achieve, but as we age it is obviously absurd to say the joy of sex is grounded in our looks!    Outward looks are not, and never have been, and never will be, the primary component of mature sexual attraction, expression, or enjoyment.

     In short, I do not see anything unique or personal to our relationship that explains what I have experienced, not physical attributes or some special sexual or emotional chemistry.   Therefore, what I have experienced is, I believe, available to most married couples.

So what is it?

The simplest way to put it would be to say that, after years of reflection, I realized that before marriage I was trying to make sex something it was not.  And, strange to say, I came to the conclusion that sex was a much bigger deal than current society seems to make it.

I will try to explain those two ideas.

It seems to me now that my pre-marriage experiences were based on an up-side down approach to sex.  I wanted the physical and emotional high, while rejecting permanent commitment and any possibility of having children.  And yet I found that even the physical and emotional high seemed to fade easily, or at least did not give lasting satisfaction.   My married experience has been dramatically different, and I believe our sexual relationship has flourished precisely because we embraced the ideas of permanent commitment and having children.

  The image that comes to mind is reaching for a beautiful flower and pulling it out of the soil, away from the source of its nourishment, and expecting it to stay vibrant and fresh.  It cannot.  The joy of sex will increase as long as it is nourished in the soil of life (fertility) and committed love.   The very things I had fled from in my youth, turned out to be the very things that were most needed.

There are many different types of love that I have experienced.  Love between friends, love of my children, their love for me as parent, love of beauty, love for my country, love of rewarding work, affectionate love with my wife, and so on.   But genital love is very different from all of these – it is a unique, and restrictive, and exclusive expression of love.    It might seem embarrassingly obvious, but just reflect on the mechanics of arousal for either male or female.  Arousal is directed towards intercourse, which is directed towards, at least potentially, procreation.

The advent of easy and effective birth control may allow me to derail the consequence of natural sex, but it could not change its nature and purpose, and attempting to do so came at a cost.   To this day I remember the chemical stench of spermicides, or, if using a condom, the awkwardness of needing to cover my genitals in latex before what was supposed to be ultimate intimacy.  Nor was asking the woman to take a very powerful hormone that would override her own complex hormonal system, trick her body into thinking it was pregnant, lower her libido, and bring a host of other side effects, any more attractive.   Put simply, skin to skin sex, without any chemical or mechanical interference, takes the sexual experience to a whole new level, a level it is meant to be at all the time.   This alone explains much of the power of what I have been experiencing within marriage.

If we accept the life giving nature of sex, then we easily see why it is inextricably bound up with its second essential quality – committed love.   While conceiving a child is extremely rare (comparing the total acts of intercourse with the total number of children one is likely to have), the fact that it could happen means that the partners should be prepared to welcome and raise any child that might result.  Children are permanent, so the bond must be permanent.  In short, the love has to go beyond transitory feelings and include a total commitment.   That this particular form of love should be forever, is natural, normal, and beautiful.

It is interesting that right up to today romantic love songs almost always seem to invoke words of permanence, of “forever” and “eternity.”   Have you ever wondered why this is?  I recall the words of a rock song from my youth (Led Zepplin):

“If the sun refused to shine, I would still be loving you; When mountains crumble to the sea, there will still be you and me.” 

Or, more recently, words from the song “Thousand Years” by Christina Perri:    

“I have died everyday, waiting for you. Darling, don’t be afraid, I have loved you for a thousand years – I’ll love you for a thousand more.”

It seems to be a proper human intuition that the highest expression of love between man and woman is meant to last forever.

Growing up, I remember being put off by the term “making love.” It seemed wildly off base – of course one cannot “make”or “manufacture” love.  But now I see that there is a deep truth in the phrase:  sexual intercourse is almost literally “making” love, and on two levels.  First, openness to creating another life requires a total giving of oneself to another, which lies at the core of true love.  Second, if that surrender to another actually leads to the conception of a child, then that child is a kind of incarnation of your love for each other, as that child is destined to be loved, and to love.  So both the language of the sexual act AND its possible consequence, a living, loving child, is indeed “making love.”

It is interesting to note that another phrase is perhaps more common today, and indicative of the decline of proper understanding of sexual union – today we “have sex” a term that is vague and impersonal.  Even worse is the passive and self-absorbed phrase to “get laid.”

One might supposed that the physical pleasure that is associated with sex would not need any discussion.   It is obviously there, and it is obviously a good thing.  But here too I have come to think it’s true status is actually underappreciated in today’s society.

We tend to take the profound physical pleasure of sex for granted – as if we invented it, or as if it appeared out of nowhere and is just there for our personal manipulation and enjoyment.   But I came to realize that orgasm is not a toy of carnal delight in the sandbox of my personal pleasures.  Rather, orgasm is the fitting celebration of the potential transfer, or reception, of human life.   It is a kind of divine fireworks to commemorate something momentous, whether on the male’s part, in giving the seed of life, or on the woman’s part, in receiving it, and allowing possible union with her own egg.  It is a transcendent, “out of this world” experience because it is a physical act that has the power to engender a being that is  indeed, partly “out of this world” – an astonishing mixture of spiritual and physical realities.   It would seem that the Creator made the physical experience commensurate to its spiritual importance.  The pleasure is suited to the purpose.

This is a key reason why sex is such a “big deal.”  We are not animals mating by instinct, and what we are creating is, as far as we know to this point, the most remarkable creature in the known universe.   Sex is complex because human person is complex.   The human person is a unity of the spiritual and the material, so sex is a unity of the spiritual (committed love) and the material (the physical pleasure as well as the potential for new life).  It is an utterly unique, interpersonal dialogue, beautifully mirrored in a physical act, that is meant to express permanent commitment and total surrender.    This can remain our “language” even when the couple is no longer fertile, whether that be days of the month, or after menopause, or, for some couples, when infertility is the condition for life.

Today, we have divorced orgasm from its procreative power, either by shutting down fertility (plugs, drugs, latex), or by having orgasm outside of sexual intercourse.   Putting it more bluntly, instead of the male depositing the seeds of life within the sanctuary of the woman’s womb, it is dumped somewhere else — onto the skin, or an oral or even anal cavity.  Is it really surprising that sex has lost much of its transcendent power?

Being consistent with this approach, my wife and I have never separated the gift of orgasm from the act of intercourse.    This will seem inconceivable to many.  To be clear, we embrace any and all forms of creative and passionate foreplay, but we do not allow final or complete climax to occur unless it is in relation to intercourse.   In my case this should be self explanatory.  For my wife, (since orgasm within intercourse is rare for most women) it means climaxing, before, during, or after intercourse, but not in isolation.

While this may seem an unnecessary restriction, I have come to see it as a profound insight.   What it avoids is treating the peak of sexual pleasure as something that is unhinged from the peak sexual act.   It avoids sexual acts and orgasm becoming what is essentially masturbation.  It keeps sex in its proper proportion and meaning, and thereby it remains fresh and ever new.  It ensures that the act of “making love” is just that. 

Of course there is a need for responsible parenting, which means spacing of children as decided by the couple.   Thus during our fertile years, if we chose to avoid pregnancy my wife and I abstained from sexual relations during the days of the month when conception could occur.   At first this might seem the same as using artificial means, but I found the effect radically different.  In one case you are simply not using that unique form of intimacy for a time, out of respect for its integrity and natural powers.    In the other you are physically over-riding a core intention and meaning of the act.  While analogies can be dangerous to use, it is not unlike the difference between eating a feast and vomiting it out afterwards (wanting the oral pleasure without restraint but rejecting self-control and the nutritional value) versus delaying the meal to a better time.

While I have covered the fundamentals of why I think my experience of marital intimacy has been so fulfilling for so many decades, there are other aspects worth sharing:

1)  These exalted ideas about openness to life and committed love which lay the foundation for such sexual happiness, do not in any way mean being unrealistic or naive when it comes to day to day sexual relations.   We need to accept our lack of perfection in living out our sexuality, even in the best of circumstances.  Humans are not angels, and we all fall far short of even human ideals. My wife and I have sometimes used sex as simple stress release, as a sleep aid, as deliverance from inappropriate sexual longings, as a cure for a bad mood, and so on.  The exalted reflections shared above do not obviate the reality that the gift has a host of simple benefits that are not always cosmic – in fact, take the s out of the word “cosmic” and sex can be sometimes just plain comic – and that’s OK.

2)   In our 34 years of marriage, neither of us has ever used sex as a weapon, or a tool of manipulation.  Not a single time has either spouse imposed the gift upon the other, or withheld it to “score a point” or to bargain for something else.  Spouses should not have to “earn” the right to have sex; we gave ourselves to each other unconditionally the day we married.   As long as there is mutual respect and sensitivity, we believe the sexual gift is meant to be given generously and unselfishly.

3)  As it should be clear by now, great sex usually has very little to do with techniques in the bedroom or particular positions – it has everything to do with using sex as it was designed and supporting it with the human qualities you bring to the relationship. There are some sexual dysfunctions that may require counseling or therapy, but normally most things can be worked out over time if both partners are patient, sensitive, communicative, and committed.   Work at being a better person day after day, and I suspect your sexual intimacy will improve day after day.   

4)  Both sexes can tend to be somewhat insecure about their looks, especially when naked, as well as worried about their sexual “performance.”  Within a marriage total acceptance of the other only deepens with time, and seeing the other naked is a privilege and special intimacy that is cherished, no matter how one’s spouse may rank on some scale of objective beauty.  To be naked and totally accepted by another is a beautiful experience; it banishes sexual inhibitions and nourishes creativity.

As to “performance”, a marriage is a lifetime to learn about the other, and develop physical interplay that is devoid of show, of sham, of pretense, or of ignorance.   Marriage is not some kind of magic that ushers in perfect sexual harmony while somehow banishing all dysfunction, but it is the stable platform upon which a beautiful relationship can develop over time.   

From the outside I realize people can think the same patterns of love-making with the same person is somehow monotonous.  But the value of ever deepening trust, mutual understanding, and total acceptance is a gift that cannot possibly be overstated. 

5)  When, for any number of reasons, we decide we are not ready for “making” a child, then we do not “make love” during the few days of the month during which my wife is fertile.

Explaining natural family planning is beyond the scope of this reflection, but it is important to mention that modern techniques of fertility awareness the natural way are at least as effective as any chemical method of birth control, and more effective than most barrier methods.  The method is virtually cost free, has no side effects, is completely natural, and can be used to achieve or delay pregnancy. I encourage you to research this for yourself.   

            However, natural family planning does require communication between spouses, and days of abstinence (no intercourse).  The truth is, periodic abstinence is one of the greatest gifts you can give to your marriage, as it encourages a regular return to romance, tenderness, and non-genital expressions of love.   And it fosters patience, and dialogue, and putting the needs of the other or the family ahead of immediate gratification – the very tools that are most likely to make a marriage successful.  It is not terribly surprising that the divorce rate among couples who practice natural family planning is 1-3%.  That says it all.   In fact, I would say without hesitation that natural family planning is one of the best kept secrets of a happy and successful marriage, as well as a flourishing sex life.

Therefore, my wife and I have never used any artificial means to avoid pregnancy.  No chemical or physical barrier has ever come between our bodies. The language our bodies speak to each other “I give myself totally and forever” has never been contradicted by our actions.   

Conclusion

           So can sexual relations with just one person be better when one is in their 30s than in their 20s?  And better in their 40s than in their 30s?  And better in their 50s than in their 40s?  Really?

In a word, yes.   And not because of any special effort or technique, but just by letting the power and goodness of natural sex shine forth.   My initial intuition about sex after my first and very disappointing encounter was correct:  there is something sacred in the sexual act.  Sex is actually a bigger deal than the modern culture has made it.  If you clip off its wings of fertility and commitment, it will be a shadow of what it was intended to be.   At least this is what my own experience suggests.

This is not to say that every sexual relationship in marriage is going to be ideal.   There are deep problems and sorrows in virtually every aspect of human life, and we all bear those burdens in different areas and different ratios.  My own conviction is that living sexual intimacy in a way that will unlock its greatest potential is only likely to help rather than hinder our overall search for happiness.

Hopefully what I have shared has offered new ideas, some theoretical and some practical, about how human sexuality has the potential to be a life-long joy.  My initial fear, before marriage, that sex would become routine or boring was based on a false understanding and false practice of sexuality.    I have offered one approach I believe can avoid most of those errors.

I suppose one could view how my wife and I have lived out our sexual life as radical.  But there is something radically wrong in the modern approach to sexuality. There is confusion and disappointment and bitterness, and the negative consequences are clear for us all to see. 

              My desire is to share a message of hope. There is good news, wonderful news about human sexuality, and I can say that finding and living sexuality in the counter-cultural way I have described has brought a joy and fulfillment I never would have guessed was possible.

Even after I survived Stage IV cancer, I fell back into bad eating habits that were deeply discouraging. In particular, I found myself weighing 210 lbs with a 40” waist, and 24% body fat.

Something had to change. A couple of books gave me a great deal of knowledge about how to eat and how to exercise (they will be listed later), and when I was able to adapt those theories to my own particular situation and personality, results were dramatic. Over the next 16 months, and just before turning 60 years old, I was able to lose 50 pounds, get my waist to 30”, and reduce bodyfat by three-quarters, from 24% to 6%, while not losing any muscle. I realize most people do not need to reach 6% body fat, but the process to lose weight and become fit is the same no matter where you desire to end up. I want to share with you the essentials of how I was able to get those results.

I will not lay out a detailed diet, explaining background information about nutrition and food composition, nor will I discuss particular gym routines or biomechanics. I skip all that partly because it would take too long, and partly because so many other people can do it so much better.

So what can I add to the discussion?

Our defects. Yours and mine.

Let me back up a bit to explain….

How often have you read an article on health and fitness, or heard a talk on the TV or radio or online, and felt that thrill within, that inspiration to begin again, to latch on to the latest new breakthrough that will finally make a difference in how you look and feel? The new Me is around the corner! Right?

I think we all know these thrills, these fantasies. The problem is they excite our imagination, they feed our ego, they show the vision at the end which seems so wonderful, they all offer stunning results if we just follow the theory, but they do NOT help us confront our weaknesses and self deception, and they do not take us by the hand to show us how to navigate the mine field of our own defects. So this talk is different in that I want to start with the ugly reality of where we are and who we are, and try to pick up the pieces from there. In other words, to move forward we have to be clear on where we stand right now.

I can’t predict what your particular constellation of defects might be – I can only share my own and consequent adaptations, and hope they are helpful to you. I do know we all share the same human nature, so it is likely that a good deal of my own challenges might be very familiar to you.

Suppose we could bottle a new fitness program, that new shiny ideal routine for diet and exercise that promises the skies. Before we get to the wonderful, transformative results at the other end, however, that bottle has to be poured through the contaminating soil of our fallen human nature. I will only address two such “toxic materials” in the soil here:

We are not objective about ourselves, either inside or out. We instinctively inflate the good and downplay or deny the bad.

We cheat at the slightest opportunity, to avoid the truth, to sneak in a pleasure we desire, or to bend the truth so we do not need to face it.

Maybe you think you don’t share these defects. I can only confess I have them in spades. In general, it is only when you try to really improve at something that you realize how intractable your defects are. Generally we prefer mediocrity because it insulates us from facing ourselves.

And here is one more truth I think we need to confront, and in fact, embrace:

We cannot eliminate our defects, we can only learn to manage them.

I am convinced that a key to progress in fitness (and, by the way, in spiritual development also) is to confront and embrace this truth that our defects are with us to the end. This does not mean we give up and declare a truce. But it means we have to be humble enough and honest enough about who we really are.

I do offer fitness training, or mentoring, but there are much more experienced trainers out there. What I might offer that is not as common is to focus on your personality and daily routine, and help you to navigate the mine field of your personal defects, so that over time you can develop a program that suits you and is sustainable. Your falls are actually the key to ultimate success, because they teach us how to adapt, so we don’t want to brush them under the rug. Viewed properly, there is no such thing as failure, only feedback.

What does this mean in practical terms? To combat those two key flaws mentioned above, not being objective and the propensity to cheat at the first opportunity, our fitness program must be anchored in daily, objective, concrete benchmarks. Call it the D.O.C. or doc doctrine. That is Key #1 to physical transformation. If we are not willing to do that, we are not ready to change. Period. And you will see how that played out in my own journey.

I will cover the material in four parts:

First, I discuss 8 key steps you will have to take to achieve physical transformation (four related to diet, and four to exercise):
Second, I lay out the six different areas that need to be considered with any fitness program.
Third, I offer ideas on what I call “defect management”
and Fourth, the Why of Mental Preparation.

Part One: the 8 Important Steps to transformation:
1) You will not lose weight if you mostly eat things like donuts, twinkies, and oreos.
2) You will need to break up your meals into 5 – 6 smaller meals, eaten about 3-4 hours apart. Breakfast is the most important meal; avoid eating in the evening.
3) Unless you plan on losing only very modest amount of weight (under 1- pounds) you will have to get used to occasional bouts of intense hunger.
4) If you want to keep weight off after you lose it, you will have to give up certain “dangerous” or high calorie foods. Put another way, to stay fit longterm, you will need the discipline to stick to a rigid and healthy meal plan, 7 days a week.
5) Your muscles will only grow only if they are surprised, so changing your routine often is essential.
6) Lifting weights will make your muscles bigger, but cardio training is the most important for losing fat.
7)If you want to lose weight in a particular area, you will eventually need to target those areas (usually hips and thighs for women, stomach for men).
8)Fat will be converted into muscle when your weight training reaches a certain intensity.

There. With those basics we can get started.…
Or not.
Because, every one of these ideas is either completely wrong, or totally un-necessary.

Unless you are pretty knowledgeable about fitness, many of these 8 steps may have seemed absolutely common sense, but I thought we should start this way to get your attention and underscore a very important point: what you may have heard or assumed about fitness is probably much more complicated and difficult than it needs to be. The fundamentals are actually incredibly simple.

As mentioned previously, every single day there are articles published in magazines and newspapers, or talked about on TV, that announce some new breakthrough in fitness, or dieting, – a new formula, a new supplement, a special food, a new exercise machine – something that can really make a difference.

Most of it is just slick marketing – capitalism at its finest – the packaging of any idea or product that might make a buck, usually by offering some new hope for the change we all crave, the quick transformation we all wish was there.

Sorry, there are no quick fixes, but there are simple things that do work and complicated things that don’t. So I will proceed by going over those 8 statements I just read that seemed so reasonable but are actually wrong, and use that as the springboard to uncover some of the real basics of fitness.

Misconception #1 – I am sure this seemed like a no-brainer – of course you can’t lose weight if you just eat junk food most of the day. Actually you can. Dr. Mark Haub, Professor of Nutrition at Kansas State University did just that. Every day he ate mostly twinkies, donuts, doritos, oreos, and soda. In two months he lost 27 pds. At the same time he lowered his bad cholesterol and raised his good cholesterol levels. He was trying to make a point that is really important: You lose weight whenever you eat fewer calories than you burn, in other words, when you run at a “caloric deficit”. Period.

Now of course you should not live on twinkies and soda, and trying to lose weight on such a diet would be really difficult and you would feel terrible. But it conveys a crucial point: if losing weight is your only goal, how many calories you consume is much more important than what you eat.

So, how many calories you should consume is the real starting point of any weight loss or muscle gain program.

First you need to know what you should consume to maintain your current weight. In other words, know the reality of where you are today. The technical term is knowing your TDEE (total daily energy expenditure). This formula takes into account your gender, age, weight, height, and estimated daily activity level, to determine the number of calories you need to maintain your current weight.

This is one of the essential, objective benchmarks that should be the pivot of your entire fitness program. If you don’t know where you start, you can’t know how you are progressing, or regressing. Just google the letters TDEE and you can get this number in seconds.

Once you have that all-important number, you decide what you want to do. If you want to lose weight, like most people, you just reduce your maintenance calories by, say 20%. You can certainly do less than 20% but results will be slow, or you could cut by up to 25% but any more than that will invite a host of very negative starvation responses, discussed later, so I strongly discourage it.

We are almost off to the races. The only other essential formula is what is called your “macronutrient ratio,” – in other words, the percentage of those calories that are protein, carbohydrates, and fat. While I would recommend a different ratio for someone who is very overweight, or very lean, I can say with some confidence that an excellent ratio for most people is 30/45/25 or 30%Protein/45% Carbohydrate/and 25% fat. If you are a male and want to build a muscular body, 40/40/20 is even better.

This does mean adding something to every meal, namely, a scale and a couple of measuring cups. Yes, tracking your calories. And for a while you have to read the labels on everything you eat to see the macronutrients it contains. But before you despair, I assure you that the modern age has made this incredibly easy. Before the internet, one would have to look up each food item in a thick and sometimes inscrutable book, add up the calories and nutrient ratio, and then add up the days totals. That is all a thing of the past. You can eat anything and just ask Google what you just did! It knows everything from a serving at a particular restaurant to the calories in one peanut to the calories in home-made foods, and provides the macronutrients as well.

I set up a single spreadsheet on my computer that automatically tallies the protein, carbohydrates, and fat for every food, and totals them as I go. My spreadsheet includes all the foods I regularly eat, with space at the bottom to add anything new or unexpected. Building such a spreadsheet does take a fair amount of time, and it is what I offer all my clients, adapted for their own preferred foods. All you need to enter is one number, say the grams of a banana, and the computer shows the exact calories and nutrient ratios and totals for that item plus the totals for the day along the top. At the end of the day I can see exactly where I stand, and decide to eat a little snack if I have calories to spare, or, if I went over, decide to cut back a bit the next day.

In total we are talking a few minutes a day – just jot down what you ate during the day, and enter it later. But then, every day, you have a daily, objective, and concrete record of your caloric behavior. It is actually a lot of fun, and every day you learn more about foods and about yourself.

“Can’t I just estimate what I have eaten?” Sure, go ahead, but if you are like me, you will cheat, and you will not be remotely accurate, and you will not lose weight. If you are not objective and accurate, on a daily basis, real progress is not likely.

There was an interesting study that looked at this tendency. A group was asked to estimate their caloric intake as well as their expenditure of energy. And at the same time they were asked to report what they actually ate and their actual exercise was tracked. It turns out they overestimated their energy expenditure by a whopping 50% and underestimated their caloric intake by another whopping 50%. Welcome to the human condition.

So if you want to learn this for yourself, go ahead, estimate and approximate for a month, or two, or three, and get back to me. I predict you will have made little or no progress.

Any serious change, in the physical, or spiritual life by the way, requires some kind of concrete, daily commitment – something you can track.

Misconception #2 – You must break up your meals into 5-6 small meals spaced 3-4 hours apart.
This is not a bad idea at all, and in fact a good one, but it is not essential. Nor do you need to eat a good breakfast and avoid eating at night. I’m pretty sure you have heard these rules – they are not bad, just not essential. What I am trying to do is lay down the absolute fundamentals, and distinguish them from the incidentals.

This point was an absolute revelation for me, as in my early training days I did in fact force myself to eat 6 small meals, and eat a good breakfast and try to avoid eating at night. And it worked. BUT, and this is key, it was not sustainable for me. It took too much preparation, AND too much planning, AND the meals were too small, AND I am a night-time binger, so the plan was asking me to avoid eating at the time I most wanted to. Asking me to not eat at night was attacking my defenses where they were the weakest. It was not sustainable.

The revelation, which should be a huge relief to everyone, is this: As long as you are running at a caloric deficit, as determined above, IN THE COURSE OF A DAY, IT DOES NOT MATTER AT ALL WHEN YOU EAT, OR HOW MUCH YOU EAT AT ONE TIME.

This is nothing short of a complete revolution in how most people think about dieting or food plans, and it gives you immense freedom to work out a routine that works for you. Remember I said you cannot defeat your defects, only learn to manage them.

Armed with the knowledge of this basic rule, I could apply it to my own life:

For example, defect #1 for me is binging at night, as well as eating heavily at dinner time. During a busy day I am actually not that interested in eating, and armed with this insight, I can now delay my biggest meals for the evening, and eat full meals when I am most tempted to eat junk, say, a whole box of oreos. Defect #2 is I procrastinate, so if I don’t get to the gym first thing in the morning, it is likely to get kicked later and later in the day, and then be buried under a barrage of excuses and justifications. Sound familiar? But when I thought I HAD to eat a good breakfast, I had a problem. It meant going to the gym before I ate, and, on to defect #3 – I am a poor sleeper and not a morning person. I have tried getting up early enough to put in a full workout before my breakfast, but while it had wonderful aspects, it was not remotely sustainable for me.
All my life I have been taught that a healthy breakfast was essential to start the day. Well, you should eat healthy, and it is wonderful to start the day with a good breakfast, but it simply is not essential. In fact, what is called intermittent fasting (IF) is very popular nowadays, and I discovered it works extremely well for me. I do not eat from about 8:30 or 9:00 at night until about noon the next day, and feel great. I am never hungry because in the evening I eat a lot, then I am asleep, and my exercise in the mid-morning kills any possible hunger pangs.
So choose any meal plan that works for you and helps to counter your particular weaknesses. If you are like me, you should be skipping down the streets for joy over the relief from this news.

Misconception #3 You will have to get used to occasional, intense hunger.
Honestly, I can hardly remember being hungry while I was losing those 50 lbs during the 16 months I went from 210 lbs to 161 lbs.
In fact, during my final preparation. for the photos on the website and the brochure, I was running at a caloric deficit of over 1,000 a day, and can’t recall any problems with hunger. Now how could that be?

Let me give four important factors for why hunger was never a problem:

First a key question: How many calories are contained in a pound of body fat? Fat, by the way, is just stored caloric energy, and a pound of body fat contains about 3,500 stored calories. So needing to lose 50 lbs means running at a total caloric deficit of 175,000 calories!!!! Sounds insurmountable, doesn’t it?

Actually, it is not. After all, I lost those 50 lbs. over 16 months, which is 486 days. Divide the 175,000 calories I needed to lose into 486 days and you get 360 calories a day. So I only had to run at a caloric deficit of 360 calories a day which is the equivalent of one large chocolate chip cookie, or just 2 oz. of cashews, or a couple of potatoes without butter.
Given my TDEE I was reducing my daily calories by only 12% – about half of what I could have done without much stress to the body. So this was the #1 reason I did not feel hungry.

A good rule of thumb is that it is healthy to lose up to 1% of your total body weight per week. So when I was 200 lbs, it would not be unhealthy to lose up to 2 lbs per week. Therefore, if I was actually disciplined and followed my own simple formula, namely my TDEE minus say 25%, I could have attained the results I did in half the time, about 8 months, not 16.

So what is wrong with me? First, I am a crawling colony of vices and defects, and very rarely kept to the perfect script. I have never been good at disciplining my eating habits. But the beauty of this program is it kept me honest. If I cheated, I knew it, and I knew what to do about it. Second, I did not learn much of what I am writing here until well into this fitness program. In fact, at first I did just estimate meal sizes and calories, as well as follow a few simple diet guidelines.

For those of you who do not want to really get too serious about fitness, I will share those diet guidelines I followed, and they do work. First – Never drink calories. Next – Avoid junk food. Third – No snacking between meals, and Finally – Have only one helping at meal time. Follow those guidelines (and they are harder than you think), and you will get dramatic results.

But on to the #2 reason I did not feel hungry during those 16 months: In a routine that involves lifting weights at the gym, eating more protein is important, and protein is a great killer of hunger. Trust me, try it, it works. More protein generally means less hunger. On the other hand, my experience is that carbs, especially junks carbs like in all processed or snack foods, does the exact opposite, it accelerates at least the perception of hunger. It certainly generates cravings to eat more.

#3 – I did not feel hungry because when you eat healthy foods, your body tends to appreciate it, and those intense sugar cravings tend to diminish. What we often associate with legitimate hunger is often really just a craving for more sugar or junk food. When we eat junk food we give our bodies plenty of calories, but not healthy calories, and so our bodies crave more food. In a sense your body is trying to tell you something (namely, that it wants real food), and we mistakenly just eat more junk food, which creates a vicious cycle. Feed your body healthy food (fresh meat and vegetables and fruit), and cravings and hunger pangs will begin to disappear.

#4 – I did not feel hungry because exercise takes away feelings of hunger. I never, ever remember going to the gym and having it make me feel more hungry. Quite the opposite. So if a defect of yours is to overeat when you feel hungry, a great strategy is to time your exercise right around the time you start feeling hungry, and your hunger will disappear until long after you left the gym. Also, you will then eat exactly when you need it most – after a workout, but when you do not tend to feel cravings, so you are least likely to overeat.

OK, now back to the 8 misconceptions we are exploring:

Misconception #4 You will have to keep to a strict diet 7 days a week and give up all those favorite, high calorie foods.

Yes, you will have to drastically reduce your intake of certain unhealthy and high calorie foods, but you do not have to give them up. You are setting yourself up for failure if you embrace an all-or-nothing diet. Remember, any meal plan that is sustainable long term has to manage your defects, not assume they will disappear!

Also, you will actually do better if at least one day a week you do not run at a caloric deficit, but feed your body at maintenance level. It is very important to understand why this is so, and it explains why crash diets are a disastrous idea. On a super strict or extreme diet you run the risk of putting your body into starvation mode, as it will think you are never going to give it even a maintenance level of calories. What does it do? It slows down its metabolism (the rate at which you burn energy), makes you very tired so you move as little as possible, sends urgent hunger pangs to your brain saying you will die if you do not eat everything in the refrigerator immediately, and it can start shedding healthy muscle while keeping fat, as muscle uses up calories while fat only stores them. You feel terrible, lose mental and physical stamina, and have almost no chance of persevering long term. What is happening is that your body’s instinct for self-preservation is fighting against your own weak will power to lose weight for some imagined benefit, and the self-preservation instinct always wins.

So strong hunger pangs are usually a sign you are not dieting properly. One day a week you should have a meal where you eat whatever you most enjoy. Call it a reward meal, or a free meal, but you should enjoy it without guilt and know it is in fact important to show your body you are not going to starve it, and show your mind that you really can keep up this improved diet for the long haul. I admit that doing this in moderation is difficult, but it is comforting to know you do not need to say good-bye forever to ice cream, cookies, pastries, pizza, or whatever you consider your most indulgent food and drink.

So the good news is that a proper diet would never involved serious or sustained hunger, as you do not want your body to panic. The problem is that even though the daily calorie deficit should not be drastic, it MUST be consistent, and this is why keeping track is important, because we will not be able to “guess” at a modest, but steady deficit. In my case I dieted well for 5 days, and took the weekend off, only to find that I was making no progress. If I had tracked the calories, I would have seen that the two days of indulgent eating was more than canceling out the 5 days of modest dieting.

Another wonderful benefit to this approach is flexibility, so that if I do go off my meal plan, even when I shouldn’t, I can just call that detour a reward meal, or, heck, a reward day, and know it is not a big deal. And if you have some family celebration where you know you will eat more than usual, just make that your free meal, or your free day.

A final warning. It is great news that a proper diet does not involve any serious or sustained hunger, as you do not want your body to panic. However, while you caloric deficit should not be drastic, it MUST be consistent. and this is why keeping track is so important, because we will not be able to “guess” at a modest but steady deficit.

In the beginning I used to take a day off a full day a week, and eat whatever I wanted, but discovered I was taking such advantage of the opportunity to over indulge, that I would wipe out the progress of the previous six days. Think about it: if you are cutting just 400 calories a day, that is 2,400 calories in 6 days. If on the seventh day you eat normally but just add a pint of Ben and Jerrys ice cream (1,000 calories), and an everything-on-it cheeseburger and large soda at a fast food restaurant (1,400 calories) you have wiped out your entire week’s deficit. You should not count the calories of your reward meal, but try not to go overboard either. Better – track those calories of your free meal a few times just to learn how many calories are involved. Is it really worth sabotaging a whole week of discipline for one or two binge meals?

Misconception #5 – Change is the key to muscle growth

Actually, it is important NOT to change your weight routine too often, as otherwise you would have no way of knowing what is working and what is not. Yes, it is good to try different routines, especially in the beginning to see what you most enjoy, and also if you have been doing the exact same thing for many months, but really, the best exercise routine in the world is………the one you can stick with. For you it might be yoga classes, aerobic classes or cycling class, using the cable machines, or the free weights, or the kettle bells, or the bands. As you advance you can become more technical and more precise, but there is not a one-size-fits-all routine, and in general, keeping a steady routine you enjoy is much better than constant change.

Misconception #6 While lifting weights is essential if you want to build muscle, cardio is the most efficient way to lose fat.
Well, while it is true that lifting weights, and not cardio, is essential in gaining muscle, it is not true that cardio is the premiere way to lose fat.
Again, with limited time I have to oversimplify, but the math is pretty simple. On a treadmill you will burn about 300-350 calories in 45-60 minutes. That is equivalent to eating just a couple of cookies – a whole hour sweating on the treadmill! And worse, cardio tends to increase hunger and binging, as well as making you feel drained – I have a lot of trouble controlling my eating after lots of cardio. 
 Lifting weights, on the other hand, actually has the opposite effect, and it also builds muscle. Muscle, unlike fat, is dynamic – it requires constant energy to maintain itself, even at rest. A pound of muscle eats about 50 calories a day just to maintain itself, even while you are asleep. In other words if you gained 10 pounds of muscle, you would need 500 more calories a day to just maintain your weight, even without exercising at all. Plus muscle makes you look better, it gives you more energy, and you will be more healthy. Finally, lifting weights can give you plenty of cardio vascular exercise if you don’t delay between exercises.

Cardio exercise is important for endurance, for sports training, and for improved health for the heart, lungs, and circulation, but as you can tell I do not put it high on my list for losing substantial weight long-term and it can be counterproductive in gaining muscle.
So if you enjoy doing aerobics, continue, by all means. But also be aware that generally people who do cardio do not do it long enough or hard enough to really drop lots of weight.

Misconception #7: You need to target areas of your body where you want to lose weight.
This is completely false, and I think even among the general public this is pretty well known. If you came to me and said you have too much fat around your stomach, I would say the most important exercises for you would be in your legs and back, as those are the largest muscles and will burn the most energy when exercised. The bottom line is: you cannot lose fat locally. When you lose fat, you lose it from your head to your toes. Genetically, you might have a tendency to lose it in one place a little bit sooner than another, but your genetic disposition cannot be changed, and by and large fat is lost holistically. Yes, ladies, I am afraid that usually means you will lose fat as fast in the places you want it, as in the places you don’t. If you exercise small muscles like your stomach or arms or inner thighs, you will burn much less energy, build much less muscle, and be that much further from running at a caloric deficit, which is the ONLY way you will start to lose fat. All those commercials marketing ab machines to get that six pack of abs are utter nonsense. There is only one way to get those 6 packs to show, and it is to drop your total body fat down to 10% for men and about 15% for women. Period. And the best way to do that is to focus on compound movements that target your largest muscles. Of course, if you have the time and interest, it is great to exercise smaller muscles, and everyone should exercise their core for stability, but these things will not transform your physique.

Misconception #8 Fat will be converted into muscle when your weight training reaches a certain intensity.

Men, this will not be good news for you, as we almost always want to lose fat and gain muscle. The reality is you have to decide on one or the other. If you want to lose fat, you must run at a caloric deficit. If you want to gain muscle, you must run at a slight caloric overage (about 10% above your TDEE).

The only exception to this rule is if you are very overweight and new to lifting weights. In these cases you can do both at the same time, at least for a while.

But think about it – if your body is being given less calories than it needs to even maintain its current weight, where will it get the caloric energy to build brand new muscles, especially since those new muscles require more calories every day just to remain at rest? You cannot tell your body to do diametrically opposed things at the same time.

A textbook example of this is my own experience. When I began my campaign of losing weight, almost a year and a half ago, my strategy was to focus almost entirely on lifting heavy weights to keep or increase my muscle. I did get stronger, as my muscles learned to deal with heavier weights, but the actual amount of muscle in my body changed very little over all that time, despite the growing visibility of the muscles. I look very fit in the photos, but the reality is my total amount of muscle was very close what it was when I started. Sad but true. If I want to gain muscle, I will have to start eating above my TDEE and will see all that muscle definition disappear for a while. Once new muscle is gained, it will tend to stay there if I eat healthy, but I will not see the evidence until I again moderately restrict calories to strip off the fat. Again, you must do one or the other. It is interesting to note that your routine in the gym does not change that much, whether you want to gain muscle or lose weight, the key lies in the amount you are eating – slightly above or slightly below your TDEE.

SIX FUNDAMENTAL AREAS THAT NEED TO BE ADDRESSED

When I give this talk as a live presentation, I ask the audience to come up with the fundamentals of a fitness program. Of course, people usually mention exercise, which needs to be separated into resistance training (lifting weights usually) and cardio (or aerobic exercise). And of course people immediately mention diet or a meal plan. Then vitamins or what I would term “supplements.” And I like to add rest as a key ingredient.
Ok, then I prioritize them. I put diet as #2, resistance training as #3, rest as #4, cardio at #5 , and supplements as #6. Hmmm, number one is missing? What is it? What could possibly be more important than diet and exercise? Number 1 is Mental preparation, maybe better – mental training.

Let me just briefly review those six areas to add some details to what I have already shared. I will address them in reverse order:

#6 supplements. The only supplements I take on a continual basis are fish oil, a multivitamin, creatine, and protein powder. On a less regular basis I have taken something for sore joints and the last several months I will add a powder with caffeine to my water bottle at the gym. I buy all my supplements from the website called Legion Athletics. Protein powder is not a necessary supplement, but if you lift weights, you need above average protein, and shakes are a tasty and quick solution. And the king of all supplements is…..water. Drink lots of water (about 3/4 gallon a day for men, 1/2 gallon for women).

#5 Cardio – I really have never done cardio consistently, going as long as 9 months without ever stepping on a treadmill. But when I really want to get rid of stubborn fat, I will do intense cardio workouts 3 times a week for about 30 minutes each.

#4 Rest – Most of us should get about 7 or even 8 hours of sleep a night. Your muscles only grow when at rest, so make sleep a high priority. I myself am a bad sleeper, so I cannot offer any wise advise on this one. If you have secrets to sleeping well, do let me know!

#3 Resistance training – This essay has focused mostly on management of food intake, because that is almost always the reason people do not get results, or any results they can see. But it needs to be emphasized that transformation in your physique requires the interaction of both diet and exercise. They are like the two legs of progress – trying to cover distance on one leg just doesn’t work.
In my case, because I was often undisciplined in my eating, I had to counteract the extra calories eaten by doing more intense workouts at the gym. That is a good example of using a strength (in my case enjoying tough workouts), to manage a defect (in my case eating more than I should). Exactly how you need to balance restricting calories (the intake) and burning calories (the output) depends on your own character and circumstances. In general, because exercise is good for you and starving yourself is unhealthy, it is better to increase your exercise (within reason) rather than decrease your calories excessively.
How, when, and what weights to lift is too large a topic to cover here of course. And in this area too one has to be clever in managing one’s defects. In my case I have rotator cuff damage in my shoulders so I have to avoid any lifts above my head. And due to a crushed disc in my spine I have to avoid very heavy weights when doing Squats, for example. This is where a trainer might be helpful, as, with a little bit of creativity and experience, one can almost always work around any physical limitation.
I recommend two excellent books: “Feed the Muscle, Burn the Fat” by Tom Venuto, and “Bigger, Leaner, Stronger” by Michael Matthews (he has a companion book for women entitled Thinner, Leaner, Stronger“. There are no doubt many other superb books on the market, but these are two I happen to have read and found very helpful. They lay out a fairly complete theory of fitness – the science of nutrition, what to eat, when; when to exercise and how.
In general, the advice for weights is the same as for a food plan – the best routine is the one you can stick to. Don’t be afraid of trying all kinds of different routines, classes, and machines – always looking for something you enjoy enough to keep doing. But whatever you do, do with complete focus and effort, and get to the gym 4-5 days a week.

#2 Diet – As I hope I have shown, this is an area people make much more complicated than it needs to be. Magazines are full of articles on why you have to eat blueberries, or avocado, or quinoa, or kale, or whatever. Certain foods may have certain wonderful properties, but for the purposes of losing weight, nothing really matters except the calorie count and macronutrient ratio. Also keep in mind that often packaged foods advertise they contain healthy vitamins or minerals, while failing to mention that they are only in trace amounts that are of no real value.
We all know we should eat fresh and healthy food, and in my case I boiled it down to only one simple guideline, five words in fact, that sum up my entire diet plan. Eat FOOOI foods, or Food Of Only One Ingredient. That’s F.O.O.O.I
In case it is not clear, you can eat a dish with lots of things in it, like a salad with lettuce, carrots, cucumbers, tomatoes, sunflower seeds, vinegar and oil; or a stew with chicken, peas, potatoes, rice, cheese, etc, – but each item is made of just one ingredient. Any and all spices are fine. In other words, avoid all processed foods. I realize that is a tall order for most people, but keep it as a goal to work towards. And keep in mind you can still eat all those forbidden foods you might miss, every week.
So at the end of each day I transfer the 3 macronutrient totals (the grams of protein, carbs, and fat eaten that day) to a separate summary sheet, along with my calorie totals for that day.
As the days pass, I can see exactly what my caloric deficit is, and on the day I weigh myself, which is once a week, there is no mystery – If I was honest and accurate, I will lose exactly as much weight as was expected. If the results are not what I want, I know the answer is a larger caloric deficit, created by either dropping the calories I take in when I eat, or increasing the calories I burn when I exercise. I also measure my waist, as that will tell me if I am losing fat rather than muscle. A set of body fat calipers, say from Accumeasure, and which cost only $5, is also helpful.
While calorie counting may seem burdensome, it is actually quite liberating. In theory one could eat the same meal over and over and never really need to count after the first meal, but that is a class A example of a tidy theory that will never fit reality. It is why diets that ask you to eat just certain things in certain ratios, will never last long-term. In normal life, one day there is a food unexpectedly missing, or a new food you didn’t expect, or a food you want to try, or a food you want to add. Or you can decide you want some fatty bacon that day and just adjust your other foods accordingly. Anything goes, as long as you weigh it or measure it, and scribble down the number for entry later in the day.
Over time you will develop a meal plan that you really enjoy, and that fits your caloric goals. The system is also self correcting, because if you do make bad food choices, like eating a bag of potato chips (not the snack size), it will jump out at you when you look at your totals for the day. You will never again have that deep frustration as you ask yourself “why am I not losing weight?!” because you will know exactly what you are doing, and what your target calorie intake should be.
Also, the macronutrient ratios recommended earlier are hard to meet unless you eat mostly healthy foods.

In summary then, if I said doing something new that takes maybe 5-10 minutes a day
could transform your physique, would you be interested? And if it cost virtually nothing, except a few dollars for a food scale, and a tape measure for your waistline?
If it sounds like a good deal, it is, and the longer you do it the more second nature it becomes and the more you learn about food in general and about your own habits.

MENTAL PREPARATION

There is not time to give a comprehensive treatment to the very important topic of mental preparation, but the two books I just referenced have excellent chapters on mental preparation and motivation. Even if you don’t read the books through, read those chapters. I could put it this way: your physical transformation will go only so far as the support of your mental preparation.

After all, you and I are not animals, driven by blind instinct or mechanical conditioning. We are a composite of body and soul, of the physical and the spiritual, and our actions are usually guided by our mind, by our desires and goals and hopes and plans. If we don’t have a very clear vision of where we want to go, and why we want to go there, we almost certainly are not going to get there, or anywhere far from where we already are. And this is not just important in the beginning, but all along the way – we have to keep remembering why we are doing what we are doing, and keep working to express those goals in daily, objective, concrete benchmarks (DOCs).

Here I will treat just two aspects of mental preparation: Defect Management, and the Why of Mental Preparation.

PART ONE – DEFECT MANAGEMENT

Nice theories never work unless and until you translate them into something that fits your own character and pattern of defects.

I mentioned in the beginning that I think we all have a tendency to cheat, and we are very bad at seeing ourselves objectively. This is why the daily, objective, concrete steps outlined above, particularly in relation to diet, are such an effective antidote to those tendencies.

In addition I think it is fair to say there is also a good dose of vanity, laziness, love of comfort, and procrastination in each of us. As an amusing aside, in my early drafts of this talk I tried to address each defect separately, but I found that my vices are so intertwined and grow in such clusters, that I gave up on the project of trying to put them in neat categories.

Instead I will simply list different tactics, some big, some very small, that I have used to deal with my own fallen nature. You will need to make up your own, of course:

Perhaps the single biggest motivator, at least from the vanity/shame angle, is to take a picture of yourself in a bathing suit, in a relaxed position, and post that picture somewhere you see it every day, such as in your phone. A picture is worth a thousand words. Do you really want to keep looking like that person in the photo?

Certain people can work out at home, but I need the gym. I need those big mirrors to shame me into action or, when I look better, motivate me to continue. I need to see the pretty women, and watch the sports programs. I need the fancy machines to give me variety. For many, the social aspect of having and making friends at the gym is a big motivator also.

A minor adjustment I made was wearing a shirt to the gym that was a bit too tight for me when I was still 20 lbs overweight. Yes, wearing a baggy sweatshirt would be more appealing for me and others to look at, but I wanted to confront what I was: a chubby old man, and drive me to change.

4) I weigh myself only once a week. If you do more you can become neurotic and discouraged. If you do less you will lose valuable time before you know results and see if you are on track. The most likely days to over-eat are Friday night through Sunday, so I weigh myself on Sunday morning. That way, that drive to “see results” for the week, to impress myself, pushes back the temptations to overeat the day right before I will be weighed. And Sunday is usually my free-meal, and a good day to be with the family and relax in general, to reward myself for a week well done. And it is 7 days away from my next weigh in, so plenty of time to “get back with the program.”

5) I time the start of my workout to be just when I might tend to start feeling hungry. Exercise kills hunger, and afterwards I feel the most inspired to have a healthy, high-protein meal.

6) As already mentioned, in my case I avoid eating when I don’t have a desire to eat (middle of the busy day), and eat most when I am most likely to binge (evening).

7) Never store your “cheat” foods in the house. Buy a half gallon of ice cream on Tuesday so that next Sunday you can eat half a cup? Who am I kidding? Better to go out and order two scoops at an ice cream store. Buy a box of oreos so you can have 4 oreos at the end of the week? It will never happen, the box will be gone in two days, max (at least in my case). Of course you do not want to deprive your family of snacks, etc. but try to find things they like which you do not, or only buy enough for the rest of the family to eat immediately. In general, if you stock it, you will eat it.

8) How did I break my addiction to butter? The truth is, I used to view butter as the main course – bread or rice or vegetables were just the template, the butter holder. This one took time. In my case, due to side effects from the cancer treatment, I suffer from dry mouth, so in addition to finding something like plain brown rice not very tasty, I also really need some moisture. And butter makes everything go down so well. So for a time I mixed no-calories or low calorie dressing with rice. The zero calorie butter sprays also worked well. But these are not Foooi foods, so my long term solution was to make many of my meals into a stew, combining meat and vegetables and water and adding low fat cottage cheese, which, when spices are added, makes a very tasty kind of sauce. I either add rice to the stew or ladle the sauce over the rice. By the way, there is nothing wrong with butter, it is just an extremely calorie dense food that is difficult to consume in a disciplined manner. If you track your calories and keep to your macronutrient ratio, you will figure this out very quickly.
While I have managed to remove all butter or oil from my diet for many months, I remain a restrained chocoholic. I mange to get in small amounts of chocolate (such as sucking on a few chocolate chips) or eat chocolate on my day off.

9) If I am confronted with a lack of healthy foods, or am short on time, I am very likely to eat whatever is in front of me. So in the evening, I try to make at least initial preparations for the next day. I might dole out all my vitamins for the next day (put them in a small plastic cup or bag), weigh out the chicken, or even cut and weigh the vegetables. Many people cook and freeze whole meals, which is great, but I prefer to eat everything fresh and have enough control over my schedule so that I can do that. But as a general rule, the more you prepare, the less you will cheat. If you “wing it” you will “blow it.” At least I do.

10) While your meals can have infinite variety, I have found it helpful to develop particular meals I really enjoy that can be repeated over and over. It means much less preparation, you can be sure you have plenty of the healthy foods on hand, and then there is less chance you will “wing it” and “blow it.”

11) I do not sleep well. Never have. So in this case I have to actually try to re-program my brain to put more effort into getting enough rest. It is silly, but a simple mantra, like “Invest in rest” or “Rest is best” repeated over and over has helped me to give rest a higher priority, so even if I am not sleeping, I am sure to stay in bed resting.

12) Like most people, I think, my will power is not very strong when confronted directly with a strong temptation. If there is a chocolate chip cookie in front of me, I will eat it. If there are ten, I will eat ten, and so on. So the only solution is to accept this weakness and work to avoid being in front of that plate of cookies. This means you may have to be in a different part of the house when the family is having dessert or snacks, or ask the family not to buy certain foods you have trouble resisting, or don’t choose a restaurant that has large portions and high calorie foods, and so on. In short, avoid the occasion of a strong temptation, admitting you will not do well if confronted with it directly.

13) Never let the day end without adding in your calories for the day and moving the essential figures onto your summary sheet. That way every single day you are reminded of your goals and your progress. By the way, a daily examination of conscience, to review the day and make resolutions for the next, is also absolutely essential for developing a spiritual life. The fact that we have forgotten something so simple is why so many of us are spiritually flabby, as well as physically flabby.

Keep in mind that while we often have flabby muscles, we also tend to have flabby will power. We will not go from eating lots of junk food to eating 100% whole foods overnight, or over many nights. We have to be patient with ourselves, and realize this is a long term program.

Of course each one of us also has unique strengths that we bring to the discussion, and it is of course very helpful to identify your strengths and work to implement them. But that is another discussion, and, rather unfortunately, outside the scope of this brief talk.

PART TWO – THE WHY OF MENTAL PREPARATION

I have been focusing on the how and the what of diet and defect management. But it would be good to end with the crowning jewel of human behavior and motivation: the WHY we do what we do. The Tom Venuto book has a wonderful chapter on this, and he guides you in writing out a statement of purpose, which you should put in a prominent place at your desk or in your wallet or on your phone – somewhere so that you can review it often. And it should be entirely positive – not dwelling on what you want to avoid, but on where you want to go.

Achieving a physical transformation can lead to increased vanity, pride, and self absorption – I would guess this is a temptation for nearly everyone. But it does not have to be that way – we are free to direct our efforts to a more selfless, and even a more supernatural, end.

For example

Being fit can be an act of service to our children, who look up to us and need a good role model.
Being fit can be an act of service to our spouse, who appreciates when we are physically attractive, healthy, and full of energy.
Being fit can be an act of service to our grandchildren, (for us old folks), or future grandchildren as it makes it much more likely that we will live long enough to enjoy them and be of service to them.
Being fit can be a “thank you” to the Creator for bringing us into existence. It is a sign of respect for the gift of life and good health.
Being fit can be an act of prayer, as we work to submit our bodies and our appetites to more noble goals than our own short term cravings and addiction to quick pleasures.

One of my greatest joys in life is when I am able to transform my hard work at the gym into an act of prayer. At those times, my heart is bursting with love and thanksgiving for my Creator, and my mind is dwelling on those I love and whom I want to serve. So I push on with one more rep, for my daughter, for my son, for my wife, and so on.

Here is my own, very personal, and very concrete, “Statement of purpose” which helped motivate me to push on in the tough times (and there WILL be tough times, when we want to give up):

May I give glory to God, and, in a spirit of thanksgiving and mortification:
be a more desirable husband,
a leader to my children,
a long-lived and energetic grandfather,
and a good example to friends.
by losing 2 lbs a week until I weigh 190 (June 14) and have a waist of 38”.
When achieved, continue to 15% body fat, regardless of weight or waist.
I will eat 2,000 calories each day, lift weights 5X week, and do aerobics 3X week.

That statement is a bit out of date, as I enjoyed the process so much that I dropped not 2” but 10” from my waist, and cut my body fat by another 50%. Doing this was one of the most rewarding and satisfying experiences of my life. And as is so often the case when we do the right thing, the benefits far exceed our expectations, and the temptation to return to old ways grows weaker. The feeling of being in control of one’s eating habits, of learning to “just say no,” and of being in harmony with one’s body, brings a joy it is impossible to describe. And growing in discipline, will-power, and self-mastery brings benefits to all areas of life, including one’s spiritual life.

Let me give at least a hint of what I mean by “the benefits exceed our expectations.” In the beginning, I could not imagine living without certain foods (for example, putting butter on just about everything). I thought I needed stronger will power, and I needed to learn to live with deprivation, to do without what I really enjoyed. This is the beginning of the process, but the end is quite different. In the end, you no longer feel deprived at all, but actually get more pleasure from healthy foods than you did from junk foods. The impossible becomes not only possible, but desirable! What was once bitter, is now actually sweet. This is one of those experiences it is hard to imagine until you are actually there. And I cannot resist asking you to contemplate this idea from the perspective of the spiritual life, as there is the exact same progression.

If you are embarking on your own journey towards physical transformation, I wish you the very best, and hope these remarks will help you on your way.

When you do achieve your goals, please let me know and we can celebrate together. Or contact me for help along the way. My email is: embracethemboth@gmailcom

This reflection on spiritual development is bound to disappoint the deeply religious, as I do not engage topics of dogma or doctrine or morality; and it may annoy the atheist, as I avoid atheist objections (they are treated in a different essay); and it may seem too little or too much for someone new to the topic. I can only hope that the 48 questions sprinkled throughout, the 9 points for reflection, and 6 practical ideas, will give you fruitful points to ponder, and help you on your own journey. I welcome your feedback and would enjoy an ongoing dialogue.

[Note: There is no pronoun in our language that is appropriate when referring to the Creator of all that is. The pronoun “He” will be used here simply because it is the most common convention. Our language does not have an appropriate pronoun that transcends gender. The Creator of all is of course neither male nor female, and far transcends any category or pronoun we utilize.]

First reflection:

As far as we know, there are at least 200 billion galaxies in the observable universe, and thus the total planets in the known universe is estimated to be a billion trillion (1 followed by 21 zeros). As far as we know, how many of those planets contain life?

One.

Why? What does this fact from science reveal about the universe in which we find ourselves?

Before answering, let’s confront the possibility that there are other life forms in the universe. In that case, then perhaps our planet is unique among hundreds of billions of planets, rather than among trillions. Does that suddenly make this planet insignificant or even less significant? Why would it matter if we were not the only life sustaining planet in the universe? Wouldn’t life forms elsewhere only increase our awe and wonder at the Creator of it all?

In any case, it would seem that the divine Author who “wrote” this “chapter” of the observable universe apparently wanted to create a planet with life that is spectacularly unique, in which, if there were other life forms elsewhere in the universe, they are millions of light years away.

How is this relevant to you? In two rather opposite ways. First, contemplating the size and scale of the universe can help us stop seeing humans as the measure of all things. We tend to be absorbed in our own immediate needs and worries, and it is good to contemplate the vastness of the universe, and thus be more aware of how much we do not know and how much we cannot control. This is an opportunity to come out of ourselves, to see our smallness, and to stand in sheer awe of the Creator of it all.

On the other hand, we must confront the reality that on this planet, floating amidst a universe of unimaginable size and complexity, something very special has taken place. Here there is life. Some would say that because we are surrounded by so much non-life that our tiny planet is insignificant, but wouldn’t it be even more likely that the uniqueness of this planet points to its spectacular importance? It is as if the painter of the universe, given infinite time, space, and matter at His disposal, chose to paint our planet of life on a vast canvas of non-life, as if to frame its importance.

Second reflection:

Because life is so rampant and so ubiquitous on our planet, we can tend to take it for granted. Because we see how species adapt and evolve over time, we also swallow the idea that life somehow started by itself – all that was needed was simple building blocks that complexified over time.

This is because we impose on the universe the assumption that time has a direction and a purpose, and this is not correct. Time itself is completely neutral. Time does not add any intelligence or direction to matter. Why is this important? Because the only way completely dead objects can come alive, is if there is some property already in the universe, whether inside those objects or acting upon them, which leads to life, which wills life. As humans we see everywhere that life tends to develop over time, so we impose that drive backwards and think life can somehow naturally “happen.” It cannot.

The miracle of life is worthy of considerable contemplation. We are made of nothing but dead molecules. You are mostly just hydrogen, carbon, and oxygen. Add in some nitrogen, calcium, and phosphorus and we have 99% of you. Those compounds are no different than those found in a rock, or in cosmic dust. The only difference is the ratio and arrangement of those dead molecules, and, voila – here you are – a being who can think, hope, and love. The unavoidable conclusion is that life is a miracle, in the sense that it could only have happened if something outside of the matter involved was acting upon it. And there appears to be a divine “conductor” who is directing and energizing the entire process.

We don’t see this so clearly because life appears to develop slowly (by our standards) and seemingly at random. After all, most species of life existed long before we did, most of them arose and died without any apparent purpose. In fact, 99.9% of all species are no longer here. How many species of life have existed on earth? About 5 billion (5,000,000,000).

Yet none of those life forms possess the spiritual capabilities of the human being.

This leaves us in a similar situation as when contemplating the scale of the universe: humbled on the one hand that we are part of a process, in this case the life process, about which we understand relatively little, but forced to confront that among all known life forms, humans hold a very, very unique place.

So within the context of the known universe, which is 13.7 billion years old, and within the context of all life, which began about 3.7 billions years ago, your life is very, very unique, and most likely has a very special purpose.

Third Reflection:

The assembling of atoms into living creatures is a mysterious wonder, and it is why we should treat all living things with respect and even reverence. But humans appear to have capacities far beyond even the most advanced animals. What is it that truly sets humans apart? The answer to this should tell us a great deal about why we are here, and where we are going.

First, it is worth noting how much we have in common with animals. The most advanced animals can be conscious, mobile, adaptable, and even creative, they eat, sleep, mate, live in community, communicate, and care for and protect one another. Viewed chronologically, we appear to be just the most advanced animal in the animal kingdom.

But the fact that humans developed after most other species has caused confusion rather than clarity. To understand a book you do not find the answer in the ink and the paper; to understand a sculpture you do not look into the stone; to understand a painting you do not analyze the brush, the canvas, or the paint. In all these cases the material came first and was refined over time (like the development of animal life over time), but you will only understand the purpose of the final product by communicating with the author, the sculptor, or the painter. To understand the human, we need to look to the Creator, and not to the animals. We need to look up, and not down.

What makes the human unique is that we possess unique spiritual qualities and capacities. If you think about it, almost everything humans truly value is spiritual: friendship, loyalty, humor, gratitude, joy, knowledge, hope, freedom, honesty, justice, belonging, beauty, peace, purpose, compassion, and love. To name a few. And the greatest suffering is usually also of a non-material nature: loneliness, despair, hatred, betrayal, and so on.
There seems to be a progression within creation: first there is dead matter, then bacterial and plant life, then animal life, and then humans, who are an odd mix of animal and spiritual. And nearly all religions posit the existence of pure spirits, or angels.

But back to you and me – this mysterious mix of physical qualities shared with animals and spiritual qualities….shared with…whom?

Fourth Reflection:

The easy answer is that our spiritual qualities were created to be shared with other humans. Is that the end of the story?

A turning point came in my life when I was standing on the side of a mountain, looking down into a beautiful valley with meadows, a roaring river, and another snow-peaked mountain rising above on the valley’s other side, and I spontaneously uttered a prayer of awe and thanksgiving.
But I was alone. Who was there to hear me? Was the creator of the beauty I beheld unable to hear? Unable to see what I saw? Unable to know the stirrings of my heart? Did the creator of all even relate to what struck me as so stunningly beautiful?

At that point I had always believed in an impersonal, transcendent Being who created and ordered existence. I had long ago decided that people who believed in a personal God were just people making the Unknowable into an image like themselves. Childish.

But is a vague, abstract Creator somehow more “mature,” or more dignified, or more divine than one that also understands human qualities? Did the Creator of all create his most complex and spiritual creature, the human, but lack the ability to share in spiritual qualities like hope, gratitude, and love? How, or why, would a Creator make eyes, ears, and tongues, and yet be blind, deaf, and dumb? Wasn’t believing the Creator could not relate to his creatures making the Creator a very limited being? Is adding human capacities to the Almighty not a necessity if He is indeed the creator of all? How does allowing a personal element to the Creator making Him less divine? Does seeing in God the spiritual and personal capacities humans have, such as to love and relate, make God more human, or humans more divine?

It struck me that the Creator of all, by definition, must contain all the attributes and capacities He creates, and to an infinite degree, and this includes human attributes as well.
I was not alone on that mountain. And you are not alone as you read or hear this.

Fifth Reflection:

We tend to have a deficient view of the Creator, making Him either too personal on the one hand, or too abstract on the other.
Making God in our image would be depicting him like a God of ancient Greek mythology: God as an old man, peering down at our human affairs, sometimes tinkering, sometimes angry and vengeful, someone we can appease with ritual or sacrifice. In short, he is pretty much like us, just more powerful.

On the other hand, we might view the Creator as a vague, abstract force, keeping the universe ordered, but not in any way involved in creation. This view allows us to feel comforted in knowing we are not exactly alone in the universe, but the Creator is far enough away so as not to impact or judge our day to day actions and we can pretty much do as we please.

Both these perspectives probably have some truth in them, but both exclude far too much. A more holistic view of the Creator would have to incorporate the vastness of the universe, including its bizarre black holes, dark matter, billions of galaxies, and blizzard of seeminlgy arbitrary life forms. We must contemplate that God is outside of time and space, neither big nor small, neither old nor young, neither human nor abstract. We must accept that much of the universe, and even more of the divine, is mysterious. But the Creator of all would also most certainly have to include all the spiritual attributes of what appears to be the highest life form in the known universe – humans.

Sixth Reflection:

The spiritual aspirations and attributes of humans are many. At the same time, human nature across the ages does not really seem to have changed that much. We have always yearned to have happy and stable families, meaningful work, good health, and a sense of community. Perhaps the most basic human need, and what would ensure our happiness no matter our age or status in life, would be to love and be loved, unconditionally.

Yet if we were created with these yearnings and capacities, and they come from God, and He must contain all attributes he creates to an infinite degree, then surely we are meant to share them with him, and not just each other?

In other words, what makes humans truly unique is not just that we have some spiritual capacities (named earlier), but that we are able to share them with our creator. We can be grateful to our Creator, we can share our joys and sorrows, we can fall in love with the source of the universe, because he shares the personal nature he placed in us.
Humans were created to live on two planes simultaneously – the horizontal, earthy plane, with all its diversity and pleasures, but also the vertical plane, where we can open our minds and hearts to our Creator.

Of course, the sad but obvious reality is that we are a shadow of this original destiny. We have lost the art of living on the vertical plane. We are like hunting dogs with the instinct to find the rabbit of happiness, but who no longer have noses, so we dash into this hole, around that bush, and up that tree, barking and searching wildly, but never seeming to find our prize. We look to money, sex, power, fame – nothing is ever enough. For the human, the goal of happiness cannot be found on the horizontal plane alone, but must include the vertical relationship with the Divine. The scent has grown cold, you could say, but the instinct and the ability is not extinguished. We still possess the wonderful capacity to enjoy interpersonal love, but this is meant to be shared not only with other humans but also with our Creator.

Seventh Reflection:

Not living up to our highest destiny is one thing, but for most people life in general is pretty miserable, and all history shows humanity has been saturated in suffering since the beginning. This is the best the all-powerful Creator could do? The universe was created 13.7 billion years ago and its climax is a few thousand years of nasty human history where we each live at best about 80 years?
First, there is no way we as limited creatures who have only recently appeared on the stage of existence, can know what the “climax” of the universe is, nor can we know if human history is near its end or only just beginning.
However, the reality of evil and suffering is unavoidable. It cannot be explained away, and to some extent remains a mystery. What is clear is that suffering and evil arise from the misuse of things that are good in and of themselves. Can you name anything inside or outside of man that is inherently evil, evil in its very substance? This doesn’t explain away evil, but it does point to the fundamental goodness of creation. The vast majority of human suffering comes from bad choices made by us or our ancestors, and this is because humans, along with all the other spiritual powers already mentioned, have been given a truly unique and very powerful gift: Free Will. Put most simply, we are living through the tragic consequences of the misuse of the terrifying power of true free will. Why were we given such a dangerous power? If we had no free will we would no longer be moral agents, we would no longer be able to choose the good or to freely give our hearts to another. We would, in effect, be robots and not persons, driven by mechanical forces and not by free choice. If the Creator willed to fashion a being able to truly love and be loved, he would have to give that being true freedom. That we have not used that freedom well is obvious, but it is also clear we can still bring good out of evil, and that our original destiny to love each other and our Creator, while obscured, is by no means lost. Nor do we know the ultimate end of the human story — right now we see only a very small slice of the big picture.

Virtually all religions and many philosophies teach that the human soul lasts past the separation from our bodies at death. Humans correctly intuit that our souls were created to live forever, and that is why death is so often viewed as an offense, an interruption, a tragedy. Ultimately, this is what makes humans truly astonishing – material beings who possess eternal souls.

So look at the human situation from this new perspective: Is 13.7 billion years, the age of the entire universe, a long time to generate tens of billions of souls that will last for eternity? Or is the 1.1 billions years, the age of multi-celled life on earth, a long time to generate 5 billion species, including over a hundred billion humans, these astonishing creatures of both matter and spirit? This strikes me as bewilderingly fast, not slow.

Nor do we know the full story of creation. 13.7 billion years could be very young in relation to the future of creation. This period of chaos and suffering could be a mere flash in relation to the totality of the human story. We did not write the story. We do not know precisely its beginning, and certainly not its end, nor do we know how many chapters there will be.

We must be careful not to keep judging the universe by human standards. Humans appear to be at the pinnacle of the known universe, but we know next to nothing in relation to the Creator of all that is. We do not know how the Creator views or appreciates the galaxies He has formed, or the life forms he has allowed to evolve.

Eighth Reflection

The creator of all that is also created time and space. This means He “knows” all things – past, present, and future, and all at the same time. He not only created all that is, but also sustains it, down to the spinning of each electron around each nucleus of every atom. To sustain all the energy in the entire universe of trillions upon trillions of planets and stars, takes no effort, as his attributes in all things are infinite. He is also the creator of all spiritual realities which are familiar to humans.

This means that the Creator could give you, literally infinite time and attention. Actually, it would suggest that the Creator IS giving you infinite time and attention. You have the terrifying gift of free will. Will you choose to respond?

Ninth Reflection

These thoughts lead directly to a consideration of prayer or meditation, which is the foundation of a spiritual life. Prayer is directing your heart or mind to God. Yes, it is that simple. Prayer is not the specialty of pastors, nor is it meant to be restricted to places of public worship. Prayer is, or rather should be, as natural as thinking, as constant as the beating of your heart.

We are likely to have two very limited views of prayer.

On the one hand is the false impression that prayer is emotional mumbo-jumbo. We clap our hands and raise our arms and speak in flowing eloquence about spiritual stuff.
On the other hand, we might think prayer is repeating memorized lines, repeating phrases spoken by a pastor or learned as a child. The one is alienating to many by its emotionalism, the other a turn-off by its seeming sterility.

For now, you must put all those concepts of prayer aside. Neither is bad, but it may not be the place to begin if prayer is new to you.

Traditional ideas about God seem to present him as interested in the morality of our actions or the content of our beliefs. Let me suggest it is not so much right action or right belief that He seeks, as right relation.

Focus instead on you as you are. Put aside any expectations of emotions and any old prayers learned by rote. Nor is prayer just rattling off a list of needs or people who need help. Start with your own thoughts, just as they are, in your own head.

Who put those thoughts there, or at least who gave you the ability to have thoughts?

Isn’t it likely that the Creator of your mind, who developed it with such delight across billions of years of cosmic maturation, would now delight in your actual thoughts? As far as we know the motions of the rest of the universe are determined by mechanical forces…except your mind, which has free will. The very fact that you can think at all is His gift, and He wants to enjoy it with you.

This can be the most helpful foundation in understanding prayer, in developing a spiritual life: you are not alone, not in the workings of your mind, not in the stirrings of your heart.

So developing a spiritual life begins with taking the time to re-establish that connection with our divine Creator.

There are two stages to prayer. The practice phase, when you actually sit quietly, alone, and literally “practice” talking to God. And the applied phase, when you lift your heart and mind to God throughout the day, asking his help and his guidance, as you face various difficulties and opportunities.

Both types of prayer are important: if we only find God in prayer and meditation, but do not allow the conversation and inspirations to spill into everyday life and experience, our spiritual life is pretty useless and selfish; but if we never set aside some time dedicated to the one who created us, we are not exercising the primary reason we were created, and our relationship with God will become remote and casual.

By now, if not long ago, you started thinking, “No way, this stuff is not for me.” Well, let’s be clear that prayer is not natural to us in our current state. It is hard, it is unnatural. In fact, it is like any new venture we take up. When I first went to the gym I felt wildly out of place. When I started learning a new language, it seemed hopeless, etc. In this case we are beginning to add a whole new dimension, the vertical, to our horizontal existence.

What has helped me is the recognition that communicating with my Creator in loving dialogue is the primary reason I exist, and in fact is likely to be a primary reason the known universe was fashioned. God did not make the universe to watch moons circle a planet (though who are we to say this does not provide immense pleasure!), he created it in no small degree so that He could converse with you and to love you and be loved by you.

Developing a spiritual life is developing that relationship, and because it is between persons, it is very much like developing a relationship with any other human person. Reflect on that, and transfer what you already know very well on the human plane, to the divine.

It is not necessary to pretend we are yogis, far advanced in the spiritual life, who must sit in the lotus position in total silence for long periods. Be patient with yourself and be creative. Play music that helps you pray or meditate, or light a candle, or go into a church, or pray outdoors in a peaceful place, or read briefly from a spiritual book, or attend a religious service. Try different things at different times. But like everything else, if you do not persevere, you will not improve.

Developing a spiritual life is a skill that needs to be nurtured and developed like any other. However, in this case, there are two persons working towards the same end, you and your Maker. In fact, God has been seeking you all along, and it is His inspiration that has gotten you to start this journey in the first place. He has never lost sight of you for even one second, it is we who have not been looking or listening.

Let me share a few, rather random, practical ideas that might help us view life from a more spiritual perspective:

Practical idea #1 – Enjoy the Revelations of Science

Contemplating the wonders of creation as revealed by science can be an important exercise in developing spiritually. For example, go online and behold the pictures taken by the Hubble spacecraft of other galaxies, and dwell on the sheer scale and beauty of the universe.

While doing that, reflect that the complexity of the universe goes in the opposite direction as well, in the direction of the microscopic. For example, there are as many molecules in ten drops of water as there are stars in the entire universe. The world in which we find ourselves is nothing short of magical!

Or contemplate the complexity of the human cell. I recommend you study it on your own, but I will offer a short thought experiment here. First picture all of New York City, with its millions of humans, animals, automobiles, towering skyscrapers, homes, factories, offices, streets, gardens, trees, etc. – it is a dense cluster of furious activity spanning hundreds of square miles. Now imagine the city is not spread out, but instead rolled up into a dense ball so that there is no space between any object and another, with none of the activity slowing down. That approximates the complexity and dynamism within each human cell. Just as an example of the speed at which microscopic change takes place, cell enzymes carry out their chemical interactions hundreds of times per second, and a male can produce 1,500 new sperm cells in just one second. Each DNA strand contains 3.2 billion letters of coding. Somehow all the parts seem to know what to do and are beautifully coordinated. And they know how to repair themselves and reproduce.

Now take that giant ball of dynamic energy, and shrink it down, down, down until it is much smaller than the head of a pin. How many of those entire cities of complexity could you fit on that head of a pin? It depends on the size of the cell, but 64,000 red blood cells could fit on the head of one pin.

And these cells somehow work in near perfect harmony throughout your entire body, noiselessly, 24 hours a day. How many New York cities compressed into microscopic units do you have in your body? Approximately 37 trillion. (37,000,000,000,000)

To get a handle on this staggering number: Suppose I asked you to create, from just simple atoms and molecules, the cell briefly described above: microscopic, tasks by the thousands at lighting speed, without noise or error, and never slowing down. How long would it be reasonable to give you to create that one cell with the complexity of New York City (the analogy with New York City is not far-fetched, there are 100 trillion atoms in each cell)? Well, if you were genius enough to make an entire, beautifully functioning cell with millions of parts in, say… 60 seconds,… and you could do that every minute of every hour of every day of every month of every year, without a break, it would take you 70.4 MILLION YEARS to create ONE human being. And yet each of us went from a single fertilized cell to a completely formed baby in under 9 months. And we dare to think life evolved randomly and slowly?

As was just stated, in each of those 37 trillion cells, there are 100 trillion atoms (100,000,000,000,000). Each of those atoms is in itself a blizzard of precise activity, with the electron spinning at 1,357 miles per second around the neutron. Contemplate. And every one of those atoms has been doing that since the Big Bang. In other words, atoms don’t grow old. So next time you think that it is absurd for any physical being to last forever, remember that the atoms that make every living creature DO last forever, it is only the coordination of atoms that expires over time. And whoever made the rules that govern the universe, could certainly choose to change the duration that atoms stay coordinated within a particular living being. This is a common error humans make: imposing our human and experiential parameters on the Creator.

So next time you watch a special effects movie, with monsters or complex machines springing out of nowhere and whole cities and landscapes collapsing and liquifying in seconds, know that the most advanced special effects are tame in comparison with the reality of the activity within just one cell of your own body.

Science offers a host of places to contemplate the magic of our world. Take a moment to study the complexity of the human brain, or the wonder of the human heart muscle, or even look at what are supposed to be simple cells like a virus or slime mold, and behold stunning complexity and coordination. Can this really be random and directionless? That there is a cosmic intelligence behind what we see seems, at least to me, common sense.

Practical Idea #2 – Probability and You

If the universe is without a Creator, then we live in an empty universe without direction or meaning, and the human, with all our spiritual longings and ideals, is the most ill-adapted creature to ever evolve. But with a transcendent Being who put all things in motion, everything changes. Your life is not an accident, nor random, and the near impossibility that you would exist, points to just how special you are. The near impossibility that I would exist, you ask?

Consider:

For you to exist requires the fertilization of an egg from your mother with a sperm from your father. However, your mother produced 2,000,000 eggs during her lifetime (though only about 500 will be released for possible fertilization). Your father produced about 525,000,000,0000 sperm cells during his lifetime. 2 million X 525 billion equals 1 quintillion, 50 quadrillion or 1 followed by 18 zeros (1,000,000,000,000,000,000).

That is nothing compared to the next step. If it was not exactly your mother and exactly your father who came together to conceive you, you could not exist, yet each of them also had a mother and father, so now there are four people who each had that 1 in 1 quintillion 50 quadrillion chance of being conceived by their parents. But the probability is not just adding one to another, but multiplying one by another. At the next generation 8 parents are involved, at the next 16 parents, then 32, 64, 128 and within just 10 generations over 1,000 parents are involved. The number of possible genetic combinations is beyond the power of the human brain to even contemplate.
Yet the incredible truth is that, for you to be you, this exact progression had to continue all the way back to the first humans on earth. If ONE single time a union was skipped, or did not take place with the particular male or female it did, even if it was back before the time of, say, the ancient Egyptians, you would not exist, as the entire genetic chain would have been altered.
You might say this contemplation is nonsense, because if any one conception did change, then someone slightly different would have been conceived all down the line, so no big deal. Who would know, who would care. You are correct. But that is NOT what happened. Fantasy does have infinite possibilities, but reality, or history, only one. The truth is you are a link in a chain that affects all of human history after you, and you are link in a chain that is utterly unique.
Imagine a deck of cards stretching from earth to Mars to the Sun and back to earth, a thousand times over, and just one card picked out of that deck. That card is you, and the Creator saw it coming and will use it in the drama of his creation. And you, with the gift of free will, can play the card of your life in different ways, with your decisions and actions reshuffling the deck of human history. Most importantly, while the Creator did not “choose” you in a literal sense, and allowed humans to use their free will and allowed natural biology to take its course, the Creator, being outside of space and time, DID foresee you, and does know your spectacular uniqueness in the movement of history, and He has been waiting to interact with your free will since the beginning of time. In that sense you were planned from all eternity. Congratulations! And next time you meet someone, remember that they too have “won” the lottery of life against unimaginable odds.

Think this over for yourself, and see where it leads you.

Practical Idea #3 – Prayer or Meditation

We have lost the art of opening our hearts and minds to the vertical dimension of reality. We are, in a sense, addicted to the horizontal, and changing this will not come easily or quickly. But to begin, just find a quiet spot where you can be alone with eyes closed for say, five minutes. In that silence, contemplate the truth that the Creator, by definition, has made all that is, and that includes your own body and your own thoughts, including the ones you are having at that very instant. To think it could be any other way is to invent a lesser God who is not the Creator and sustainer of all that is and ever will be. As a human being, capable of interpersonal communication and authentic love, you are the most advanced creature (meaning sharing the most qualities with the divine) in all of the known universe. And this means the Creator is assuredly deeply aware of, and interested in, you. This includes your every thought. There is nothing preventing you from simply opening your mind and your heart to his presence. It is simple, but it is not easy, as we have almost completely lost the art of incorporating our Creator into who we are. When we open our mind and heart to the Creator, it may seem nothing has changed, but in a very real sense, everything has changed – a third dimension has opened in your life. Take those five minutes and bask in this new reality.

Five minutes is just a suggestion, a first small step where you can get used to watching your own thoughts, contemplating their source, and sharing them with your Maker. The goal of 15 minutes for meditation or prayer, done twice a day, is ideal – any less and a sense of relationship is not likely to develop. Start slowly and be patient with yourself, but know that prayer or meditation is the foundation of the spiritual life.

Practical Idea #4 – Support of Religious Affiliations

Many have been brought up with some kind of religious training, and many of us have abandoned those teaching due to poor example, even abuse, or because we have become lazy or distracted by other things. A short reflection like this will not take you very far. At some point you will need the support of others, as well as have a deeper intellectual and spiritual tradition to explore. There is a reason a few great religious traditions have lasted across centuries and they are worthy of serious attention. If you have been a Muslim, consider returning to living the 5 pillars faithfully. If Buddhist, decide to be diligent in trying to understand and live the 8 fold path and the four noble truths. If you come from a Christian tradition, perhaps you could start by reading the New Testament on your own, and then start asking tough questions to people in a denomination you respect, or have been part of.
Part of our human nature is social, and we need the support and guidance and example of others to help us on our own journey.

Practical Idea #5 – Food for Thought

You probably know some people who make a sign of the cross before they eat a meal, and usually they say a brief prayer before digging in. This is a small but important disposition, for we did not create food, nor ourselves, nor those we love, so it is wonderful to pause for a moment to give thanks. Do the same, at least with a moment of interior silence and gratitude for the food you will eat. But don’t stop there. Who created the taste, and sight, and texture, and smell of food, of every morsel you eat? Who created your tongue, and your pleasure of eating? Treat each mouthful of food like the opening of a present – appreciate and thank the One who created it for you. Eating should not just be an activity we brutishly share with animals, but a more personal dialogue with the giver of all these gifts. Try it. Even the food will taste twice as good.

Practical idea #6 – Beauty as God’s Perfume

Beauty is something virtually every human experiences every day, in some form. It could be through the sense of sight, hearing, touch, taste, or smell, or it could be an idea or memory or emotion. If you think about it, there is a nearly endless list of things we find beautiful.

We experience it all the time, but trying to define it is surprisingly difficult. It seems to be related to a sense of proportion, of order, of “rightness”, of harmony.

Think of the experience of beauty like a thought in your head. Who invented it? Who made you able to perceive beauty and to enjoy it? It is clearly a capacity that is given to us, an instinctual response to life as we perceive the world around us or within us. It is a gift.

Next time you perceive something really beautiful, think of beauty as a kind of delicious perfume. When we smell a perfume we usually think of the person who wore it. Sometimes smell can bring back memories more strongly than anything else. Beauty is the Creator’s perfume, an indirect sign of his loving presence. It is a gift from Him to you. Beauty haunts so much of creation like the haunting of a wondrous perfume that is meant to remind us of the person who wears it. Beauty is a sign of the love God has for His creation, and He implanted that appreciation in you so that you could rejoice with Him.

Renowned atheist Richard Dawkins sneers at the fact that humans can only perceive a tiny sliver of the total lightwaves that science has now uncovered, and he compares our limited human sight to the wearing of a burka. But who determined the light waves we would be able to see, and are we less important because we cannot see radio waves or gamma waves? As limited creatures should we complain that we do not have omniscient sensory powers? That science is uncovering a whole new world of light waves is wonderful – just imagine how the Creator of all enjoys every one of those bands of light, all to perfection, all at the same time.

When you behold beauty you do not need to rush to share the experience with someone – you can share it right then with the divine inventor of beauty. Each day can be an ongoing exchange as the creature beholds the created world and gives thanks back to the Creator.

CONCLUSION

Even with our defects, man’s position in the universe is utterly unique. We are not an afterthought, but rather the crowning jewel of the known universe, worthy of the billions of years the Creator chose to make our existence possible. We are the ONLY known creature with the spiritual qualities listed previously. Most religious and spiritual traditions believe in pure spirits with no material bodies (angels for example), but man is a unique mix of body and soul.

It is true that much of the universe, and even much of human behavior is “determined,” in the sense that what happens next is based on the physical influences of what has come before. To that degree the modern materialist who rejects all spiritual realities is correct. But what caused creation to appear as it did, with its nearly infinite complexity and intelligence, with its ordered and purposeful laws of nature? And when you come to the human being, you are introducing the precious and powerful gift of free will. The Author of life has written the story of creation to allow for some of its characters to actually write parts of their own story – not control it, but change it. The Sculptor of all forms has allowed some of its forms to come to life and have free will. The divine Painter, celebrating creation across the canvas of the universe, chose to allow some of the figures to come alive and make paintings of their own.

Developing a spiritual life is being more aware of our spiritual capacities, and putting them to work. The highest use of this gift of free will is for us as creatures to turn around, look at our Creator, and say “Thank you,” and “I love you.”

No other physical creature in the known universe can do what you can. Your life is unique and has great importance, your use of free will impact all of history, and your soul will live forever (death is just a doorway between two worlds). You are already an expert at living on the horizontal plane, now begin the adventure of adding a new dimension to life, the vertical plane. To develop a spiritual life, is to recover the primary reason you and I have been added to creation. Rejoice, for all of the most noble intuitions of your mind and the deepest longings of your heart are true!

Feel free to contact me to begin a conversation at embracethemboth@gmail.com