Finding The Ultimate Pleasure Park

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We live in a world where pleasure-seeking has become a highly prized ritual. And we keep upping the ante on what constitutes “pleasure.” Sado-masochism is being normalized, evidenced by the immense popularity of “Fifty Shades of Grey.” Addiction is rampant, and kids are smoking more than “plain old pot.” They are, instead, indulging themselves in cheap, synthetic marijuana, guaranteed to give both an outrageous high and a psychotic break.

The stakes are going up, and so are the consequences. I’ve gotten five phone calls in the last few weeks from desperate mothers trying to figure out what to do about their drug-abusing children. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that our societal disorder is escalating. So, what in the world is the answer?

I was praying about our collective cultural quandary the other day, and quite frankly, my heart was heavy. I decided to meditate on where it all began—the place where sin, chaos and disorder first entered the world. I began reading Genesis and glanced down at the footnote for Genesis 2:8, where the Garden of Eden, paradise, is first mentioned. I was stunned to learn that “Eden,” translated literally from the Greek, means “pleasure park.” Well, I thought, that explains everything!

Human beings first resided in a pleasure park, and it was positively delightful. Teeming with love, life and light, God’s blessing rested everywhere. Banished from paradise due to original sin, we’ve been trying to recreate Eden ever since. We seek endless pseudo-pleasures to fill the void, yet we avoid the one thing that can bring us real fulfillment.

Because here’s the thing: the bliss of paradise consisted in being in God’s presence, and in enjoying an intimate love relationship with Him. Paradise cannot be found outside of the Divine Presence—no matter how wildly we seek it elsewhere. St. Augustine, who discovered this personally, said it this way: “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”

It’s not surprising that the less time we make for the pleasure of God’s presence, the more frantic and chaotic we become in trying to fill the God-void. Busyness is epidemic today, as we chase after endless activities, trying to do it all. On occasion, when we’re “still,” we plug ourselves into any number of gadgets that consume our attention.  The endless noise makes it impossible to find interior silence, the place where Presence dwells and the sacred space into which God speaks.

How do we get back to Eden? Where do we find again God’s life, love and light? We must cultivate the garden of our soul, and we must be intentional about doing it.

There is no substitute for spending time alone with the Lord daily, where we speak to Him, become still and listen for His voice.   God asks each of us, every day: “Where are you?” and He wants us to honestly tell Him. He yearns to uncover, possess and penetrate our hearts, and He wants us, in turn, to unveil ourselves, remove our fig leaves and let Him come in.

The secret to finding paradise is simple, yet it comes with a cost. If we “waste” time in God’s presence, and seek Him for His own sake, the place of delight will unfold from within like a beautiful garden. And the pleasure park it contains will surprise and satisfy us with its sweet, healing fruit.

Hope Answered: The Way of the Child

Unless you turn and become like little children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.                                  Matthew 18:3 

“God the Father is so pleased with you,” the old priest said with a broad smile on his face after praying over my husband, Bernie, just hours before his death. “Well done, Bernie. Well done!”

“It’s hard to miss the echo of God the Father’s thundering voice at Jesus’ Transfiguration saying: ‘This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased,’” I wrote about the experience in my book, Miracle Man. “It suddenly dawns on me that this is what Bernie Klein has been waiting for to die, and that this is precisely the gift that Our Heavenly Father wanted to give him so he can finally rest in peace,” I concluded.

The assurance of being God’s beloved son. A child of the Father. Isn’t that the identity that all human beings are called to discover?

Jesus enters this world as a little child precisely to teach us to say “Father,” says Joseph Ratzinger, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, in his book of collected sermons entitled The God of Jesus Christ. His vulnerability as an infant and a child make it clear that humans are not meant to be self-sufficient, but that we are by our very nature relational, in need of others and in need of God.

He became a child. What does it mean to be a child? To begin with it means dependence, needing support and help from others...Being a child…means learning to say “Father.”*

Sounds simple enough. But human experience tells us that it is often very difficult to say “Father” from our hearts. It can be painfully hard to perceive God as a loving, merciful Father, as Abba, Papa, Daddy. We suffer from what could be called a collective father-wound in our culture, and the wound bleeds openly, even in the Church. We are facing a crisis in fatherhood itself, where the meaning and importance of fatherhood are called into question, and where more than half of the children in our country are growing up in homes that are absent a father’s presence.

Each Advent, we are invited to reconsider the infancy of Jesus, which points us to the truth that we, like Jesus, are God’s little children. And like Jesus, we are called to address God personally, intimately, familiarly—as our Father. The profundity of creatures assuming such a stance before Almighty God can hardly be overstated.

I recently noted with interest that the Church’s Advent readings contain a recurring theme. The Old Testament ends with a prophecy of the Messiah’s forerunner, John the Baptist, who will “turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers.” (Malachi 3:24)

The Gospel of Luke begins Christ’s Infancy Narrative with a repetition of the same promise. There, the angel Gabriel declares to John the Baptist’s father that his son will go before the Savior to “turn the hearts of the fathers toward their children…to prepare a people fit for the Lord.” (Luke 1:17)

It seems that a major theme of Advent is the turning of heavenly and earthly hearts one to the other, anticipating the spiritual healing that God desires for each of us: becoming a child, becoming His child, becoming like the Christ-child. Healing of this sort makes us fit for a relationship with the Father, and retrofitted for membership in His family.

The babe in the manger is completely vulnerable and dependent, much the way the sick, the elderly and the dying are at the end of their lives. Just the way that my husband Bernie was when his earthly life came to a close. Such vulnerability is good and necessary if we are to shed our world-acquired illusions of autonomy and enter God’s kingdom—which admits of only one path—the way of the child.

*Joseph Ratzinger, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, The God of Jesus Christ, Meditations on the Triune God

Finding Advent Hope: The Pathway Through the Heart

God cut a highway right through Bernie Klein’s heart, an artery that could give him life. Not surprisingly, that’s where Love seeped in.

“I died and I clearly remember it,” Bernie told me after waking up from a six-week coma brought on by a massive heart attack and subsequent multiple organ failure. “I could see myself floating in the air, looking down at my body, and I could see my damaged heart.”

That vision was the start of a near-death experience six years ago that took my late husband Bernie to heaven and back, where he met God and encountered with great clarity both the profound love of God and the spiritual condition of his own heart. I share the entire true story in detail in my book, Miracle Man.

“It looked like my heart was torn in half, and half of my heart was a vivid color of blue that looked like ugly debris. I knew that represented all of things I had done in my life that were not pleasing to God,” Bernie shared soberly. “The other side was beautiful gold, and I knew it represented all of the things I’d done in my life that were pleasing to God.” Bernie was “sent back” by God to undergo what he called his “purification,” about which he emphatically stated: “And I NEED it.”

Bernie’s experience calls to mind a series of Advent sermons delivered by Joseph Ratzinger, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, in 1964. Ratzinger called our lives “an enduring Advent” and said:

the borderline between "before Christ"and "after Christ"…runs through our own hearts.*

“Insofar as we are living on the basis of selfishness, of egoism, then even today we are ‘before Christ,’” said the man who would become Pope almost fifty years later. He explained that our vocation as Christians is “live with Christ and in Christ,” an ongoing event in our hearts that makes every day of every year Advent for us—for the rest of our lives.

To live with Christ and in Christ is the hope of Advent, and for Christ to live with us and in us is our hope for glory (Colossians 1:27). In Advent, we invite the God-man to be birthed anew in our hearts, asking Him to blur the dividing line in us of all that is “before Christ.” In Advent, we welcome the Lord and ask Him to occupy our hearts, much as He did the manger in Bethlehem. In doing so, all that is “before Christ” within us increasingly decreases.

“Judy, you have no idea how much God loves you,” Bernie said as he finished telling me his near-death account. “I will spend the rest of my life spreading the message of God’s love to others,” he concluded. “Nothing else matters.”

God’s incredible love. Nothing else matters. Bernie saw that clearly after meeting God.

Paralyzed from the neck down and completely dependent on life support, Bernie’s mantra for the last six weeks of his life became: “You have no idea how much God loves you.” He spent those last days enjoying what he called “fellowship with God,” allowing God to run a road from his once-divided heart straight to heaven, this time, to stay forever.

This Advent let us take the occasion to ask: Where is the line drawn in my own heart? How much of my heart does not yet belong to Christ? May His Divine Presence displace everything in us that is not of Him, and may His light dispel any darkness in our hearts.

*All quotes from Joseph Ratzinger, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, are from the book of Advent sermons entitled: What It Means To Be A Christian.

Cultivating Advent Hope: Healing Our Decembers

Tears flowed freely during the meeting with my spiritual director, Sandy, as I shared with her the pain I was feeling. “December is here,” I said. “I get such a wave of anxiety and grief at this time of year.” Somehow, I have a hunch I’m not alone in experiencing December this way.

December is the month that “our lives blew apart with more violence than we ever dreamed possible,” I wrote in my book Miracle Man. The month that my late husband, Bernie, suffered a massive heart attack—leaving my children fatherless and me a widow after 87 excruciating days in the ICU. Six years and a wonderful new marriage later, December still brings it all screeching back.

“Beg the Lord to heal the trauma of all your past Decembers,” Sandy wisely advised. “And ask him to fill you with the joy of his birth.”

For December is also the month when we celebrate our Savior’s presence penetrating Earth’s agonies, defying what human eyes behold as mere babe-flesh, disguising the God-man. This is the month that Hope is born, ushering in the time of fulfillment for the long-awaited healing of our crippled souls and lame lives. December is, indeed, the month of Advent hope.

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The hope of Advent lies in experiencing the reality of human frailty—and in believing that Someone, though fragile in appearance, is coming to heal us soon. The hope of Advent consists in a hearty cry for deliverance from the weight of sin and death—and in trusting that God’s glory-weight will pierce right through all of this world’s darkness. For we have all known the sorrow of “Decembers” during life’s winter months, times of shadows and suffering where we cry out for the Light to come.

Every year I’m reminded that December is a fitting backdrop for Advent, as it is the month that throws off the least amount of light in the calendar year. The days grow short and winter begins. The darkness brings with it a certain sense of vulnerability and disorientation, along with the knowledge that we need more Light, so we can see.

Advent hope has everything to do with vision. Advent hope is inexorably connected with eternal perspective. That’s because hope—Christian hope—is so much more than plain old wishful thinking. It is the theological virtue by which we order our lives toward heaven; the virtue that establishes trust in us that there is a heaven, and gives us the conviction that we’ll live there with God some day. Hope reminds us that this earth is not paradise, and it strengthens and sustains us as we travel toward the longed-for Promised Land. Hope gives us a new vision for our lives, enabling us to see that what may look like “disaster” to human senses is but a moment of time that God holds in his hands, shaping it for our good, while simultaneously, mysteriously molding us into good.

“Can you see your Decembers as a time when God reaches into your life to work miracles, instead of as a time of sorrow?” Sandy gently asked. “You saw that once,” she continued. “You wrote a book about it.”

Yes, I saw it clearly then. But somehow I go blind every December.

And maybe that’s as it should be. Since it is December’s darkness that beckons me to encounter my desperate need for a Savior. Along with my need for a divine infusion of Hope.

Thankfully, it is Advent. The season of so much blindness healed. The Church’s daily readings ring out promises of what the Messiah will bring, along with rich Gospel accounts of those promises being fulfilled:

On that day the deaf shall hear…and out of gloom and darkness, the eyes of the blind shall see. The lowly will ever find joy in the Lord, and the poor rejoice in the Holy One of Israel.               (Isaiah 29:18-19)

 And then we hear:

Two blind men followed him crying, “Son of David, have pity on us!” …Then he touched their eyes...And their eyes were opened. (Mt. 9:29-31)

Touch our eyes, Lord, and enable us to glimpse reality from heaven’s angle, through the lens of Advent hope. Heal all of our Decembers, and fill us anew with the joy of your birth.

Advent Hope: What Are We Longing For?

I was meditating on the theme of God surprising us, and I received the below reflection unexpectedly from my daughter Gabrielle Klein Hicks.  It was too beautiful not to share!  Gaby is a homeschooling mother of three young boys and she and her husband, Grayson, are expecting their first baby girl next April.  Enjoy!!!

Advent is my favorite season of the Liturgical year. The year begins anew as we quietly prepare for and anticipate the birth of a child. But not just any child… Emmanuel. God with us. In a total act of love and mercy (and with Mary’s “yes”), the Word is made flesh and dwells among us. God the Son is revealed so that He may ransom His people held captive by sin and darkness. The hope of salvation is born. The Light of the World has come. What a thing to rejoice!

I can remember as a child feeling a painful longing come over me in Mass during Advent, and then ecstatic hope during the Christmas celebration. I remember being moved to tears every year, not knowing quite why, since my relationship with God was immature and distant, at best. What was I longing for? Why was I so hopeful?

Now as a mother, I begin to understand Advent and Christmas in a new way each season. A priest said to me during my first pregnancy, “Well if you don’t get Advent now, you never will!” regarding the fact that my baby boy was born on Christmas Eve. But I didn’t get it then. These days, time and experience (and two more children with a fourth on the way!) have revealed to me what I felt then but did not yet understand. This year, as I reflect on the gift of a child and the hope of new life, I see how much God has taught me through my children.

Almost every day there is a moment where I gaze upon each child’s face. Whether I am putting them to sleep or checking on them in the back yard, I just watch them.  Their innocence and lack of self-consciousness never ceases to amaze me. Their hearts have faith in their own goodness as well as the goodness of others. They love so freely. This is particularly evident when they see themselves in the mirror. Every time they see their reflection, they greet themselves with the most genuine smile. They are pleased with what they see, because they see what God sees…A person beautifully and wonderfully made by their Creator. And His creation is good. They don’t see frizzy hair or an ugly nose.

And I often wonder, when does this joy and peace in the way God created us get lost? When do we become not only self-conscious, but honed in on every flaw?

Watching my children has taught me to rediscover the truth about myself. Something I lost during so many years of exile in sin and darkness. I have relearned what I once knew as a child, which is that God is good and God is love. God made me in His image and likeness, therefore I am good and made for love. God loves me. I am good.

I can see self-consciousness developing in my almost six year old. It hurts to watch. I want him to hold on to the truth about who he is in God forever. However, in my heart I know that all of my children will lose this truth to some degree as sin manifests itself in their lives. They will have their own story of how God reveals Himself to them and sets them free. I am sure it will be a beautiful thing for me to behold, but I wish I could spare them the pain of their sin. I know, of course, I can’t. Pain is so intimately intertwined with new life, evident in labor and birth. You can’t have one without the other. Plus, Christ came to save them just as He came to save me. I know I would not have learned these lessons without feeling the pain of my own sin and without the life experiences I’ve had so far. So I trust in God and in the stories He’s written for each of their lives.

As I realize all these things, I now understand what I was longing and hoping for in those days as a child. I longed to know God and to be in communion with Him. I longed for the Truth and to be saved from all the lies my sin led me to believe about myself. And the ecstatic hope? Well, that was the chance I saw to come alive again in Christ. A chance to be free like a child once more. An opportunity to see myself as good again and have peace with my flaws, just as my children do now.

Every Advent, we will continue to await this ecstatic hope. I will continue to tell my children that Jesus loves them so much that He came down to this earth to find them and eventually lead them home when It is finished. I will show them in my own clumsy way how to long for God, how to make room in our hearts to receive the King, and how to endure the pain until He reveals Himself. They will know that they have a chance for not only new life, but true life in Christ, and that alone is worth hoping for!

The story of the Incarnation is almost too much to behold. God becomes a man...We will finally be set free! But for now, we will be patient as we wait. We will dive deeper into the mystery of being brought from exile into new life. Hope for you and me and all mankind. Then we will rejoice alongside the heavens and earth when our Savior finally comes!

Held

Overcome with emotion as I watched my dear friend, Melanie, walk through the front door of the tiny chapel last Friday evening, the tears were flowing freely.   Tears of happiness that my fellow widow was getting married again, mixed with tears of remembrance of all of the times we had wept together after our husbands died.

Those were some raw, painful days. But this was a new day. We were celebrating a resurrection.

Mel glowed radiantly as she walked up the aisle of the rustic 18^th Century Baton Rouge church, where her fiancé, Bob, and her two sons—both Protestant pastors—waited in front to celebrate nuptial vows. The moment could not have been more beautiful, with eight little ivory clad granddaughters preceding the bride, and a harpist throwing ethereal sounds through open windows that welcomed the encroaching dusk. Quite the contrast to the many evenings Mel and I had spent at my home sharing stories of shattered dreams and weeping together, even as we reminded each other that we were still safe in the embrace of God, maybe being held closer than ever before.

Her story included the agonizing disappointment of failed marriage, followed by the all too brief elation of meeting and marrying a best friend, a devout Christian man with whom she was happily prepared to spend the rest of her life. They'd been married just twenty eight months when Don was struck dead late one September afternoon, hit head-on by a crystal meth-crazed driver as he toured a country road on the motorcycle he loved. The wreckage was immense on every level. I met Mel shortly thereafter, and I watched her scrape herself out of bed day after day to tend to the needs of her eleven-year-old son and meet with clients in her counseling practice. I marveled that she was able to get out of bed at all, to put one foot in front of the other and continue to walk forward—and that she trusted that God had not abandoned her. Natalie Grant’s song “Held” became her anthem, and she played it all day long to remember that God was holding her, even in the midst of her pain and darkness:

This is what it means to be held, how it feels, when the sacred is torn from your life

And you survive. This is what it is to be loved, and to know that the promise was that when everything fell, we'd be held.

We huddled together and held on, and we were held. And now, on another September day, a new holding was taking place. I pondered the mystery of life’s seasons as we beheld this resurrection:

Do you take this woman… to have and to hold, from this day forward…until death do you part?

Melanie was getting married, and God and Bob would hold her now.

God-incidentally, Mel’s wedding happened to be the same weekend that I was celebrating the second anniversary of marriage to my precious husband, Mark. Mark and I met two years after my late husband, Bernie, died of a massive heart attack. Having just returned from working abroad for twenty-seven years as a Catholic missionary, Mark was spending several hours a day praying in the Adoration Chapel, discerning what God had in store for him next. It was there that we met.

We struck up a friendship, centered on our faith in God and on our mutual love of Catholic theology. Walks on the lakefront discussing theology and philosophy turned into discussions about our life journeys. The reality of jarring and unexpected changes, the death of lifelong dreams and the prospect of futures uncertain all became fodder for conversation. Mark and I became closest friends over the months, and a year after we met we were engaged.

On September 29, 2012, the Feast of the Archangels, we pronounced our wedding vows at Sacred Heart Catholic Church amidst the pouring rain. Many nights since then Mark has held me close, catching tears of gratitude for my new life with him, as well as tears of still fresh grief from life’s unanticipated wounds.

All of that came rushing in as I watched a dear friend with whom I’ve shared so much walk up the aisle, her feet and face light with happiness. It would have been enough for us to be held by God, and that’s all we were hoping for, really. But to be held again in the arms of marital love was an unexpected rebirth for both of us. I give heartfelt thanks to God for the gift of new embrace, for Melanie and for me.