Emails from the Desert...A Friend Goes On Vacation
Reprinted from the Asian Journal
Around 1990, Lucie and I visited the Blessed Sacrament at St. James Church in Solana Beach. The parish kept a selection of books for those interested in reading while keeping vigil in the chapel. She picked a small volume from the stack, entitled “Opening to God” by Thomas H. Green, S. J., and handed it to me.
We were both fascinated by the author’s bio on the back cover, which in part read: “Father Thomas Green is a native of Rochester, New York...has advanced degrees in education and physics from Fordham University...and a Ph. D from the University of Notre Dame...is presently the Spiritual Director of San Jose Seminary, Manila, Philippines and Professor of Philosophy and Theology at Ateneo de Manila University.”
It was an engrossing book on prayer. Fr. Green had a unique way of lucidly explaining the “Our Father”, as I had never heard or read before. Consequently, I began to pray the “Lord’s Prayer” with a better understanding since I first recited it in kindergarten. I tracked down the books that Fr. Green had used as references for his work. That research opened up a wealth of classic works on prayer and spirituality.
Faithful to his Jesuit upbringing, Fr. Green blended the spirituality of St. Ignatius of Loyola which I was familiar with and Carmelite spirituality which I was interested in but found difficult to decipher. The collected works of the famous Carmelite poet, St. John of the Cross, are fascinating but tough to grasp. Fr. Green, however, made it easier to understand St. John’s mystical theological concepts.
Fr. Green, I found out, was a very popular retreat and spiritual director in Manila (his conferences were standing room only). He had written many popular books. I understood why he was so well-loved by his audience as I read all his books: When the Well Runs Dry, Darkness in the Marketplace, Weeds Among the Wheat, A Vacation with the Lord, Drinking from a Dry Well, Prayer and Common Sense, Come Down Zacchaeus, The Friend of the Bridegroom.
I learned that Fr. Green’s manuscripts were published by Ave Maria Press of the University of Notre Dame and that his books were so well received that they were published in several languages (French, German, Italian, Spanish, Korean, and Indonesian). Later, I had the opportunity to meet with Frank Cunningham, editor and publisher of Ave Maria Press. It was delightful to learn how Fr. Tom and Mr. Cunningham worked together to develop so many popular books.
Soon after I read his first book, “Opening to God”, I wrote Fr. Green a short letter to let him know how much I enjoyed reading the book. To my surprise, he promptly sent me a postcard, acknowledging my letter and informing me that he was on a trip to several Asian countries to conduct retreats and conferences, as was his practice during his summer vacation.
Thus started a series of letters (emails when the internet later became available), which culminated in my visits to San Jose Seminary to chat with him. He returned the favor by spending time with our family in San Diego, celebrating Mass at home and giving a lecture at USD.
I always knew when Christmas was around the corner. Fr. Tom’s newsletter was always the first to arrive, usually around the first or second week of December. My family newsletter, on the other hand, usually got to the post office after Christmas or the New Year, and in some extreme years, at Valentine’s!
It was an honor and a privilege to have known Fr. Tom. He made my day when he sent me a personal copy of his book as soon as it got published. He reviewed the manuscript of my first book and suggested the title: “From Mt. Krizevac to Mt. Carmel” because, as he pointed out, it was two books in one. Last year, even as his health was failing, he reviewed and wrote a blurb for my second book, “Virtuous Healers: Models of Faith in Medicine”.
It was a very sad day, when I received an email from Fr. Khing Vano that Fr. Tom Green had passed away. His last Christmas letter had indicated that his health was deteriorating and that he was waiting to see what the Lord had in store for him.
It is a gift to get to know a dedicated missionary, a famous author and a living saint fairly well. I am grateful for the communications and conversations we had over the years. Fr. Tom taught his students at San Jose Seminary and his retreatants many valuable things. Faithfulness and trust in Divine Providence was one of them. As a young missionary, he had been directed to start his missionary work in Japan. Due to a drastic change in circumstances, however, he ended up in Manila instead. He did not understand why that happened, but he never questioned the Lord’s plans for him. And thus he flourished where he was planted.
The lesson I like the most was his insistence that spending time in prayer (even in “dry prayer”, as when “the well runs dry”) was not a waste of time because spending time with the Lord never is. He said not to worry if we did not feel like we were progressing spiritually. He offered the example of an operation, for instance an appendectomy.
Prior to the operation, the patient would experience abdominal pain, nausea, and vomiting. During the operation, when the patient was under general anesthesia, he or she would obviously be unaware of the extent of the surgeon’s technical efforts to correct the problem. After surgery, in the recovery room, the patient would wake up, still experiencing abdominal pain from the incision and nausea or vomiting from the anesthetic drugs. For the patient, nothing has changed. His condition remains as dire as ever.
As in the spiritual life, only God knows how much work has been done inside us. We remain clueless.
Fr. Green encouraged everyone to set aside time for a retreat, or what he called “A Vacation with the Lord”. I truly believe that Fr. Tom Green is now spending a grand vacation with his Friend.
###
more E-mails from the Desert
Dr. Gamboa is also the author of the book "Virtuous Healers", a collection of essays that offers a timely, insightful, and often personal look into healing and spirituality, life and death, in everyday encounters.- AJ
06.MAR.09 The Garden of Eden
06.FEB.09 Double Speak
30.JAN.09 A Cup of Tea, Before Sunrise
16.JAN.09 A different kind of Santa
19.DEC.08 A lonely Christmas...
28.NOV.08 The Perils of Capitalism
21.NOV.08 Sold-out Audience Cheers for Asian Silk Road Concert
31.OCT.08 The Sarah Palin Factor
10.OCT.08 Restore Traditional Marriage - Vote YES on Proposition 8
19.SEP.08 Olympics, Philippine Style
08.AUG.08 Wisdom - where to find it?
25.JUL.08 Moonlit Beach
11.JUL.08 Breast Cancer Treatments
27.JUN.08 Breast Cancer 101
13.JUN.08 PATHWAYS
06.JUN.08 Coming Out Soon! "Virtuous Healers"
30.MAY.08 Filipino Nuncio
23.MAY.08 Pan de Sal Cruise
09.MAY.08 TAKE COURAGE !
02.MAY.08 Rethinking Iraq
25.APR.08 Heralds of Hope
18.APR.08 Pope Benedict XVI Visits America
11.APR.08 The Sage
Friday, March 27, 2009
Monday, March 2, 2009
The Garden of Eden
(Reprinted from The Asian Journal)
Sometimes I wonder how far we, human beings, should go. How deeply should we venture into the mysteries of the universe? Does the One Infinite Intelligence want us to discover and unravel all of the intricacies of the created world? Or does God – whatever our finite minds can conceive the Eternal Being to be – want us to just go along for the ride?
Does God want us to go into stem cell research, into genetic engineering, into cloning? Or does He/She want us to simply enjoy the fruits of creation, without dismantling its delicate clockwork or messing things up?
The church, a fount of wisdom enshrined through centuries of experience in human affairs, cautions us against pushing the envelope. Yet, we now realize the error of suppressing Galileo Galilei’s heliocentric explorations into the universe. No less than the great Pope John Paul II apologized for that shortsightedness. Three and a half centuries later, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, the brilliant Jesuit paleontologist, probed20this issue. The Vatican has yet to put de Chardin on the pedestal he deserves.
Is stem cell research in our day and age a parallel dilemma? Or does caution in tinkering with the seeds of creation – and being aware of the logical principle that the end does not justify the means – endow us with the wisdom to uncover an ethical solution to the problem of regenerating beneficial cells?
The author of Genesis struggled with this issue, around 900 BC. The Israeli writer(s) came up with a simple story of the Garden of Eden (literally, “The Garden of Delights”). Stay here, Adam and Eve. Live well and enjoy the fruits that have been provided for you gratis. But, stay away and do not touch “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.”
Curious and undisciplined as human beings were in the beginning of time -- and still are to this present age -- Eve ate the apple and gave the residual to Adham (Hebrew word for “man or humankind” or “a creature made from dust”). And Adam did not even have the courage to admit that he had succumbed to the temptation; he blamed Eve (Hebrew word for “mother of all living”)!
Thus, God banished man and woman from the Garden of Eden and let them out into the world, to bear the pain of childbearing, to raise food from thorns and thistles, to labor for their daily bread “east of Eden”. Yet, as history unfolded, mankind multipl ied and prospered. Human beings discovered fire and harnessed the energies of the earth. Man learned to utilize water, oil, and the planet’s essential resources. Our ancestors conquered the mountains and the seas. They planted and they built. The frenzy of uncontrolled building led to the Tower of Babel. At that point, God said enough is enough. I let you free to roam and discover the earth, but you now think you are the masters of the universe. You will speak in different tongues and realize the errors of your ways.
The genius in this tale of the Garden of Eden is that it is a human being’s effort (or the Jewish community’s effort) to make sense of the complex mystery of God’s creation. It is an attempt to make sense of man and woman’s relationship with the Being from whose creative hands they originated.
The Garden of Eden is more than a prescientific explanation of cosmology. It is an effort to make sense of how far we, human beings, can venture to develop the earth and the skies and the resources God has bequeathed us, and how careful we need to be so that we are not blinded by our brilliance and think we know it all.
I am amazed at the haughtiness of people who regard the Garden of Eden as a simpleton’s story, or Scripture a bunch of fables. Naïve comments on this subject, such as those from prominent media personalities, only reveal them to be intellectually nimble perhaps, but essentially cerebral lightweights. & nbsp;
In 399 BC, Socrates was forced to drink a poisonous concoction of hemlock for railing against pseudo-intellectualism. The great Greek philosopher had insisted that people who think they know it all are dangerous. People who think they know, when in fact they do not, are pathetic. Unfortunately, these pseudo-intellectuals can be outright disastrous for they often are the ones who, by sheer chutzpah and a deluded sense of greatness, run our governments, our churches, and our many institutions. In other words, they run our lives!
One can examine the stimulus package and spending bill that the United States Congress just passed and note how on target Socrates was.
It takes wisdom to acknowledge that we know that we know nothing – or, at least, that there are many things we do not know. Yet, while Socrates and Plato and Aristotle made us aware of this simple fact, many have yet to learn this truth.
###
Sometimes I wonder how far we, human beings, should go. How deeply should we venture into the mysteries of the universe? Does the One Infinite Intelligence want us to discover and unravel all of the intricacies of the created world? Or does God – whatever our finite minds can conceive the Eternal Being to be – want us to just go along for the ride?
Does God want us to go into stem cell research, into genetic engineering, into cloning? Or does He/She want us to simply enjoy the fruits of creation, without dismantling its delicate clockwork or messing things up?
The church, a fount of wisdom enshrined through centuries of experience in human affairs, cautions us against pushing the envelope. Yet, we now realize the error of suppressing Galileo Galilei’s heliocentric explorations into the universe. No less than the great Pope John Paul II apologized for that shortsightedness. Three and a half centuries later, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, the brilliant Jesuit paleontologist, probed20this issue. The Vatican has yet to put de Chardin on the pedestal he deserves.
Is stem cell research in our day and age a parallel dilemma? Or does caution in tinkering with the seeds of creation – and being aware of the logical principle that the end does not justify the means – endow us with the wisdom to uncover an ethical solution to the problem of regenerating beneficial cells?
The author of Genesis struggled with this issue, around 900 BC. The Israeli writer(s) came up with a simple story of the Garden of Eden (literally, “The Garden of Delights”). Stay here, Adam and Eve. Live well and enjoy the fruits that have been provided for you gratis. But, stay away and do not touch “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.”
Curious and undisciplined as human beings were in the beginning of time -- and still are to this present age -- Eve ate the apple and gave the residual to Adham (Hebrew word for “man or humankind” or “a creature made from dust”). And Adam did not even have the courage to admit that he had succumbed to the temptation; he blamed Eve (Hebrew word for “mother of all living”)!
Thus, God banished man and woman from the Garden of Eden and let them out into the world, to bear the pain of childbearing, to raise food from thorns and thistles, to labor for their daily bread “east of Eden”. Yet, as history unfolded, mankind multipl ied and prospered. Human beings discovered fire and harnessed the energies of the earth. Man learned to utilize water, oil, and the planet’s essential resources. Our ancestors conquered the mountains and the seas. They planted and they built. The frenzy of uncontrolled building led to the Tower of Babel. At that point, God said enough is enough. I let you free to roam and discover the earth, but you now think you are the masters of the universe. You will speak in different tongues and realize the errors of your ways.
The genius in this tale of the Garden of Eden is that it is a human being’s effort (or the Jewish community’s effort) to make sense of the complex mystery of God’s creation. It is an attempt to make sense of man and woman’s relationship with the Being from whose creative hands they originated.
The Garden of Eden is more than a prescientific explanation of cosmology. It is an effort to make sense of how far we, human beings, can venture to develop the earth and the skies and the resources God has bequeathed us, and how careful we need to be so that we are not blinded by our brilliance and think we know it all.
I am amazed at the haughtiness of people who regard the Garden of Eden as a simpleton’s story, or Scripture a bunch of fables. Naïve comments on this subject, such as those from prominent media personalities, only reveal them to be intellectually nimble perhaps, but essentially cerebral lightweights. & nbsp;
In 399 BC, Socrates was forced to drink a poisonous concoction of hemlock for railing against pseudo-intellectualism. The great Greek philosopher had insisted that people who think they know it all are dangerous. People who think they know, when in fact they do not, are pathetic. Unfortunately, these pseudo-intellectuals can be outright disastrous for they often are the ones who, by sheer chutzpah and a deluded sense of greatness, run our governments, our churches, and our many institutions. In other words, they run our lives!
One can examine the stimulus package and spending bill that the United States Congress just passed and note how on target Socrates was.
It takes wisdom to acknowledge that we know that we know nothing – or, at least, that there are many things we do not know. Yet, while Socrates and Plato and Aristotle made us aware of this simple fact, many have yet to learn this truth.
###
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