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Reality seems out there - totally objective, totally concrete and yet, in point of fact, what we experience as reality is shaped to a great extent by what is inside of us, what is inside our heads, our hearts and our souls. I remember once going on and on about an issue to a spiritual advisor who finally sighed and said, "My God, how you love to catastrophize!"
I recently read a book called Generation to Generation, about family systems. One section was called the "Paradox of Seriousness and the Playfulness of Paradox." I found this quite fascinating. The author tells us that the seriousness with which families approach their problems can sometimes be more the cause of difficulties than the effect of the problems themselves and efforts directed at the seriousness will often eliminate the problems.
Families that are too serious are as if surrounded by a volatile aura (fumes of anxiety) and a small incident can cause a flare up and we of course always assume that it is the incident that caused the problem when often it is the way we relate and think that gives any incident its inflammatory power.
 Fieldman, the author of Generation to Generation, gives an example of a good husband and dedicated father who found that his wife was chronically having affairs so he took her at once to a marriage counselor; but she refused to go back. He tried for two years to get her to see the light, rather desperately. He showed anger; he threatened; he tried to make her jealous and at his wit's end, he heard about the paradox of seriousness. So the next day when the husband came home, he found his wife on the telephone and predictably, she hung up quickly. So resisting the urge to berate her, the husband said, "Listen honey, I can see you need some time alone so I'll just go for a walk around the block." Well, predictably, the wife's behavior escalated. At the end of the week, she informed him she was off to visit an old boyfriend. So he went off to the travel agency, got her some brochures on the place where she would be going so that she could have fun, and added some suggestions of his own along the way. Well, she took them without any comment, flew off and was back within three days, saying she had a terrible time. The following week she joined him in counseling and continued long after he had dropped out.
Our understanding and our loves are limited by who we are. What we grasp and what we long for is very much determined by our own nature, by our personality set. Well, this is not really a new idea. In the Middle Ages the scholastic theologians commonly said that whatever is received, is received according to the mode of the one receiving it. Saint Thomas Aquinas attributed that insight to Plato - a very old idea. If it is true that our attitudes about life, our expectations, our plans, our hopes, our fears, our dreams, our desires, if it is true that all these shape the reality that we experience, then to alter these is to alter our experience of reality.
 And each one of us, each Christian, is called to be transformed into the image of Christ. We are called to be purified and transformed by love and into love. Every Christian is called to live the contemplative dimension of the Christ event. Each of us is invited into a deep consciousness of what it means to be created by God, what it means to be redeemed by Jesus, and what it means to be a temple of the Holy Spirit. And the more our lives are rooted in Christ, the more our lives are rooted in the love of Christ and in the conscious knowledge of that love, then the more everything we do will spring from and be informed and shaped by that love. In fact, the more active we are in the world, the more important it is that our actions spring from and be grounded in contemplation, in a deep knowing of who we are, by being who we are.
That we are rooted and grounded in Christ is Christian self-understanding. Every Christian's call is to be a reincarnation of Christ. The way of action and the way of contemplation are sometimes presented as opposites, as though one could do one or the other. Contemplation and interest in the inner life, concern with our attitudes towards life (our expectations, our plans, our hopes, our fears, our desires) can be seen as totally irrelevant to the way of action in the world, or worse, it can be seen as a distraction from the real important part, which is, changing the world. However, to change ourselves is to change the world. To allow ourselves to be transformed into more loving persons is to find ourselves in a very different universe. When you stop "catastrophizing" you find fewer catastrophes happening and the husband who encouraged his wife's freedom of choice, found himself in a very different relationship with her.
We do not work at becoming more conscious of who we are and what we value, just for ourselves. We do not live a contemplative life and look at the contemplative dimension of the Christ event for purely selfish reasons. For the church and the world are starved for wisdom and for love. And all over the world there are those who have a deepening sense of despair and ruin. The more we allow ourselves to be changed and rooted and grounded in love, the more visible God's reign is to us and through us. There is no greater act of social or political or religious responsibility that any of us could undertake than to become more fully conscious, more fully rooted in consciousness, more fully rooted in God.
The way of contemplation, the way of the inner world, is not in any way in opposition or conflict with social or political or religious responsibility. To be rooted in love is to act out of love. We need to read and ponder the scriptures. We also need to be open to the new things God is leading us into through the Spirit of Christ. Conversion is a continuous process. It may be as dramatic as Paul's experience on the road to Damascus, or as gentle as the beloved disciple's recognition of Christ on the shore. The inner world and the outer world are one. Who we are and what we do are inseparable.
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