Down by the riverside ...

Today I had breakfast with my sister and her husband on the balcony of their new apartment.  So peaceful, looking out over the Brisbane river as the City Cats scampered by and the Sunday morning walkers strolled, power walked and jogged along the riverside pathway.

Two other sisters also have apartments that look out on the same river, while the remaining one has chosen ocean views on the Sunshine Coast.    What is is that draws us to live out our later years watching the river flow by?

Louis Armstrong made famous the old spiritual Down by the Riverside.

        Gonna lay down my sleepy head        Down by the riverside;
        Gonna lay down my burden
        Down by the riverside.

The lyrics were quite eschatological:
        Gonna try on my long white robe
        Gonna try on my starry crown
        Gonna put on my golden shoes
        Gonna talk with the Prince of Peace
        Gonna shake hands around the world
        Gonna cross the river Jordan
        Gonna climb upon that mountain
        Gonna climb the road to heaven

 Another noted black musician, Paul Robeson, is remembered for his signature song Ol' Man River which also references the Jordan and looks forward to the Judgement Day.

        Let me go 'way from the Mississippi,
        Let me go 'way from de white man boss;
        Show me dat stream called de river Jordan,
        Dat's de ol' stream dat I long to cross.

The singer reflects on the burdens of life:

        Ah, gits weary
        An' sick of tryin'
        Ah'm tired of livin'
        An' skeered of dyin'.

Somehow he sees an end to it all being bound to the river

        Dat ol' man river,
        He mus'know sumpin'
        But don't say nuthin'
        He jes' keeps rollin'
        He keeps on rollin' along.

Doubtless these old southern spirituals are very mindful of the biblical rivers that feature so strongly not only in Israel's history but also in its heavenly vision.

The Psalmist tells us of the exiles longing for home:

        Beside the rivers of Babylon, we sat and wept as we thought of Jerusalem.

Jerusalem is nowhere near a river, sitting atop a desert hill. But Ezekiel has a vision of a heavenly Temple that will arise there one day, from which will flow a river giving life and peace to the arid lands around.  The captives long for that day when the river of slavery will be replaced by the river of freedom.

John updates this vision in the Book of Revelation:

        Then the angel showed me a river with the water of life, 

        clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb.

Which brings us back again to the Jordan, where Jesus was baptised.  The symbolism of the river water as cleansing and life-giving is clear, and embraces our theology of baptism in the Christian Church. And it's end-time significance is simultaneously celebrated.  By happy coincidence, the Communion song at Mass today was Come to the Waters !  And next weekend we celebrate Riverfire which draws many thousands of people to the waters' edge to see the parade of illuminated boats and the fireworks -- the river gives joy and community.

So maybe some of all that is at work in us when we look to retire to an apartment with river views. There we can draw on the refreshment and freedom that even a muddy stream can offer us, as we watch at the same time the life it draws to itself.

There are several songs titled The River of Life.  I like this one.

        There's a river of life flowing out of me,
        Makes the lame to walk and the blind to see.
        Open prison door sets the captive free,
        There's a river of life flowing out of me

Less than perfect

I have never been a great fan of our latest saint, Mother Teresa.  Not that I ever doubted her sincerity and the good she did.  It was just that there were so many "other sides" to her story.  I found her treatment of her Missionary Sisters medieval, subjecting them to extremely conservative discipline and poor training.  There was always a question about the standard of medical treatment she offered, especially in view of the considerable financial support she received.  At times she appeared too much a media star.  And always that difficult question of evangelising pressure in a dominantly Hindu nation.

Mind you, her stubbornness and refusal to kowtow to male ecclesiastics stood her in good stead.  But having JPII as number one fan wasn't always an endearing feat.

Her canonisation is a timely reminder that saints aren't perfect. They are held up to us as examples of what real-life sanctity is.  They are humans who have striven in the circumstances of their life to respond to God's grace.  There have been moments of wonderful virtue and even heroic activity.  There has been constancy in seeking the truth and trying to live it out.  And they have done this despite their human failings and limitations which are there for all to see.  Their lives tell us that we too can find sanctity despite our own imperfection.  For in the end it is God alone who can bring perfection out of our imperfection in the resurrection .

So, if we keep the saints in proper perspective, we can look to them and learn from them.  And maybe even benefit from their prayers for us!   Saint Mother Teresa, my apologies and do pray for us.

What the hell?

The problem of evil is one that has exercised great minds down the centuries.  It enters theological consideration in the very first pages of the Bible.  For some, all of human history is about the battle between good and evil.

The reality of evil in our world gets driven home day after day in our news reports.  No image more forcefully speaks to me of how real evil is than that of 5 boys executing ISIS prisoners in Syria.  I don't impute the evil personally to the boys, hardly old enough to be responsible for their actions.  Rather the evil is the Jihadist culture/perverted religion/monstrous inhumanity that surrounds them, indoctrinates them, and incites them to such perverse actions.  Their boyhood is stolen from them, their humanity is destroyed.

Ultimately such evil must be seen as only possible because of the reality of free will (still hotly debated by philosophers and denied by rationalists and secularists).  The human person has the ability to choose: and that means one can choose actions that are of themselves evil or have consequences that are evil.  But why?  Psychologists suggest that such choice is possible because one somehow sees what we consider evil to be in fact for them in some way "good".  Which again points to a concept of evil that transcends individual choices, which poisons the mind and perverts one's choices.  And yet we cannot abandon the concept of individual responsibility for all that.

Which raises the question of hell.  To deny its existence is both fashionable and understandable.  It does not sit easily with the concept of an all-merciful God.  And yet the idea that the Jihadists actually are embraced into heavenly bliss as they blow themselves and countless other innocents into eternity is surely unacceptable.  "Judge not", I am reminded.  Yes, it is impossible to know the mind and responsibility of those who perpetrate even the most horrific crimes.  But it is just too much to imagine Mother Teresa welcoming Osama bin Laden for a heavenly morning tea.  

Enter the much maligned and overlooked Catholic doctrine of purgatory.  Can it be that after death an all-merciful God actually gives even the most depraved of his creation an opportunity to purge themselves, to reshape their personality and will, to slowly and painfully come to a realisation of how wrong they have been and to embrace the good they so rejected in this life?  (Romano Guardini wrote insightfully on this.)  But in the end there must remain the possibility that one could reject even such a second chance and freely will to remain eternally in one's evil mindset.  A hell of some sort can't be wished away.