Pio's Proverb 135: SUICIDE: Questions and Answers

My Dear Readers,

I have invited Benjamin Bourlier, Composer, Musician and Philosopher to a sit-down discussion on suicide so that many who are tempted in this way will hear some wisdom from this young man who has dealth with this issue from many perspectives and knows first hand the mechanisms of the mind that occur in people who are tempted to suicide.  I believe you will soon see that he is not only an expert in this field but also has a great compassion for those who are so tempted to suicide. He hopes and prays that many will be helped by his words.  My own prayer is that those so tempted will trust in God and not give into the tricks of the evil one who wishes to destroy people who are made in the image and likeness of God.  All those so tempted should also ready my Pio's Proverb 132: "How beautiful are you?"  You are precious. You are beautiful because God willed you into being, and God is Beautiful. He wants you to live and live to the fullest. St. Iraneus said: "The Glory of God is a mad or woman fully alive!"  Please stay "alive" for God, for yourself, and for your family and for your future family. If you have even one child, you will produce 25 ato 50 thousand people from now to the end of time. So, to kill any person is to kill 50 thousand future persons as well.

I will be making some comments during this session in  [brackets] as Pio's comments like a dialogue to Benjamin and you.

Here is Benamin Bourlier Wisdom as he answers questions I have asked him and more:

Peace and love, Pio Peter Zammit

Ben: On Suicide (for “Pio's Proverbs”)

            “Bottled up for days

in great sweat of being, seeking

to bind in speed – petere – desire,

to construct knowing back to image and

God's face behind it turned as mine

now is to blackness image shows

herself, desire the light

speed & motion alone are, love's

blackness arrived at going backwards the rate

reason hath – and art her beauty God the Truth”

- Charles Olson

Ben: Pio has again invited me [Benjamin Bourlier, 24, composer/pianist/writer] to compose a post as an extension of a conversation we had, or are having,  concerning the question of suicide. Pio was asking me a series of questions attempting to gain an understanding of the experience of suicidal thinking, of the desire – or as he called it, “temptation” – to die, which he explained is a desire he's never had, and which I admitted I've had (for better or worse) many times, as recent as a few months ago, and he suggested I write a post in the form of a question and answer, a format he believes reveals more of what's “in the heart”. Some of these questions are ones he asked me directly, some are ones I might expect him to ask, but all are questions someone who is considering suicide will likely confront in some way or another, I think it's safe to say.

Q: What is suicide? What is suicidal thinking? Why is there even the temptation of suicide?

A: My simplest answer, which is of course biased in its language re: my role as a creative artist but I think generally true: suicide is a poverty of the imagination.

[Pio's comment: If you read my "Pio's Proverb #162: "Imagination: How our's mirrors God's" aa well as read Benjamin's many comments on this particular blog, then you will see the depth of Benjamin's definition of suicide as: "suicide is a poverty of imagination" - as an bad use of imagination or a poor use of imagination since suicidal thinking is a separation of ourselves from all the possibilities of our own personal good and the good of the universe as a whole as well as the Goodness of God who put us here to "imagine more beautifully"! -- to see and "image" our being more beautifully.]

Ben: To my mind, suicidal thinking is the process of the imagination exhausting itself to the point of ruin, to the point of being incapable of at all conceiving of living consequence, of the most fundamental continuity (this can be within, without, by no means necessarily private or public etc). You'll notice many deaths conventionally/legally considered suicides aren't exactly suicides-as-such under this definition – many euthanasia scenarios, for example, the reasoning often being so much simpler and commonsensical (it is easier to understand, at least, why a ninety-year old patient dying slowly of terminal cancer may want to die peacefully than it is understanding why a seemingly healthy, promising fifteen year old may want to). Because, the truth is, when we bring up suicide, I think what we're really most disturbed and challenged by is this latter case, the suicide-via-depression, or suicide as the result of some outwardly inscrutable inner logic. Depression and this exhaustion of the imagination are perhaps synonymous this way. I don't accept that suicide can be called a “temptation”, having lived through depressive suicidal episodes, though in the case of familiar euthanasia scenarios the option becomes more basically tempting, simpler on account of the inevitability of an otherwise cumbersome death. Suicidal thinking while clinically depressed is very different, far more existentially exhaustive, where the reality of suicide is the reality of the imagination's fragility, its countered responsibility to articulate the world and overwhelmingly probable failure to do so, worn at the “rate reason hath”.

[Pio's comments: euthanasia be it at age 90 with a patient of terminal cancer is still suicide with just different reasons. But the result is the same: volutary termination of life before natural death. I believe that at age 14 or 90, this imagination of dying and carrying out is a temptation to escape some form of suffering that seems or is imagined is a greater suffering than the death imposed on oneself. Both in self-inflicted suicide or by a doctor inflicted it upon oneself, the result is the same: to escape where death is imagined the less of two evils. In both instances of these forms of suicide, the temptation is real. The imagination that present this escape could be not only from the self...but the fact is that Satan does have great access to our imagination. He has no access to our will or actions as such. He can only suggest pictures or thoughts to our mind that cause our emotions to awake. Suicide is an emotional reaction to these imagination. I deeply believe that suicide is very oftern suggested by the evil one because he knows this is a sin that does not have time to repent of...But only God knows if such an act is truly a willed and free act. Still the evil one will still try to see if he wins the soul or not. Bishop Sheen said it most succinctly: "At the end of the road of life, no matter what road we take, at the end of our life we will see one of two faces: Jesus' or satan's. Both will say the same thing to us: "Mine! Mine!"  Suicide for whatever the reasons has the same result: our seeng one of two faces and being eternally possessed by a loving Savior or a hateful devil. Suicide stacks the odds in favor of the devil winning.]

Q: Why wouldn't you consider it a “temptation”? Doesn't it wipe away all of one's earthly problems? Isn't it a tempting solution?

Ben: A: It is a solution only in the most impoverished sense. If you can recall ever being very deeply stumped by a question on a test, not because you simply didn't remember the answer but because the very logic of the question seemed inscrutable and absurd, where you get that sinking, cold-sweat feeling of isolation in your inability to proceed as classmates hustle through briskly all around you: the experience of depression and of suicidal thinking generally is much nearer, I think, to this event than to the event of a calculated solution. It is the kind of logic one invents for one's self in the event of absurdity.

[Pio's comment: Benjamin's insight in his analogy of isolation in one inability to proceeds as classmates hustle through briskly all around you is worth noting. It is a flow of insight into the mind that is faced with a world that is perceived as absurd and inscrutable which causes a depression that leads to the image of suicide...that is opting out of the test by leaving the testing room. But this imagination is a false one; and if one acts on a false belief (a delusion), then the results can be castastrophic for the person in that is death is eternally final. Such a extreme decision needs to only be pre-anethezied by surrounding that person with a loving family. When one of my three sons was tempted to suicide very seriously, I took him to Europe to show him to see the larger picture. He noticed and told me he never knew there were so many people in the world. When later - after much fatherly love and attention - he had to go on business to another state in the US after we came home. He told me later that he again was very tempted to sucide when feeling "ISOLATED."...I asked him, "How did you handle that temptation, son; and he answered deeply and heartfully: "I would never leave my family." So, the only way to help suicidal person, I believe, is to give them large anti-suicidal doses of great family love.]

Ben: I shared a quote from St. Augustine that had struck me with Pio: “My heart is much busied...amid this poverty of my life”. In Augustine's terms, suicidal thought is a heart made idle, un-busied, collapsed irretrievably. The outer poverty of one's life, as I read it, is a kind of blessing, a struggle in the classical cynic sense of redemptive, valuable experience. It is a simplicity or uniformity of obstacles. The capacity of the “heart”, to triumph over the obstacles of life without is probably the most powerfully redemptive feature of consciousness, the will to not only persevere but project one's inner light, to heal – the quote struck me as an ecstatic projection this way. One can think of the familiar stories of bravery and perseverance in the face of all kinds of worldly struggle, of people finding meaning in misfortune. The un-busied heart, though, void of its ability to form this meaning, standing emptily against the weight of indifferent worldly struggles, is quite literally the worst condition, it seems to me. There are so many times in life where all one has is the resilience of one's inner will, where one is totally, empirically lost without it. The depressive truly stands alone, in their vulnerability to any and all trauma. 

[Pio's comment: Isolation seems to be a recurring theme as Benjamin tries to share his insights with us. There is a part of the brain that detaches us from others as separate from others. If this part is stimulated too much, then this separation becomes "isolation from others" which becomes all the more acute. That part is called: "pareital lobe"     Also, the "limbic system" - is the most primitive part of our brain - the "fight or flight" mechanism and here is harbored anger, fear, resentment and depression. Neuro-theologians (MD's) say that prayer turns off the limbic system for our good.]   

Q: What is the benefit of suicide; what is the person looking to get out of it? And what about the soul? It seems to me, if someone didn't believe in an afterlife, they would want to stay alive as long as they could, because their body is their only vessel of awareness. But even if they did believe in an afterlife, they would they not want to treat life with as much respect as possible in preparation for the afterlife?

Ben: A: Well, honestly I don't know how to accept the categories of “body” and “soul”, especially in specifically religious terms. Do I believe in an afterlife? Well, no, not in the conventional religious sense of a sustain of my ego-identity beyond my body somehow, no, that doesn't make sense to me; my identity is so wholly dependent on my body; one might think of someone who, say, loses an arm at a young age, entirely the same in every other respect, but whose experience and emergent identity thereafter is significantly altered, so that if we imagine them sustained on into an afterlife without their body, we still have to conceive of them being shaped by their life with only one arm – they enter the afterlife differently, the same as any differentiated identity, organized in Dantean strata or however. Well, if that loss of the arm's so significant (and it is), what about this loss of the body itself? How can we conceive of the identity at all, it's been so radicalized? I don't think we can, not in the conventional sense. But neither is death the end. Which I say as much commonsensically as mystically. It simply isn't. I might say to myself that I'm presently experiencing the pinnacle of awareness the otherwise unconscious materials of my body can hope to achieve as it were, the peak of this wave of material sentience I enjoy as a human. I'm the arrival, continuously, of materials into the vessel of consciousness. But this arrival is something I'm mostly unconscious of, which I can't discretize in terms of my unitary, cyclic perception of reality. It's happening all around, constantly, the reformation of materials into what I recognize as other human beings and reality generally. My empathy with the species is an empathy, quite literally, with the all, with the continuously associative connectivity of material into and out of conscious states capable of specialized empathy, which is itself dependent on the transience and fragility of my ego. Scientifically speaking, material presently constituting me will be reconfigured into other conscious states, even within my lifetime.

Empathy is a radical experience, I understand this more and more every day. It is not mere social awareness or embracing one's responsibility to others etc, but insight into this continuous extension of consciousness, something one might very well access alone; thoughts that are new and fresh in me I understand now to be thoughts that must not have been any more evident in the world than that I would realize them just now, which I see has to be the similarly buried experience of other humans experiencing these thoughts and then struggling to articulate them in the world so that they would be any more evident than they are, for me, and in a sense failing to. I catch myself now, when I have a flicker of a new thought, gaining an insight into the sadness of this thought's ex materia human history, of the others for whom this thought was privatized because of its being no more evident in the world than that I thought of it just then. Language has made it thus.

My point in this re: suicide is that suicide is simply not the end. It's a strange irony to me that so much of the attitude of religious ritual is supposedly a process of coming to terms with death, an acceptance of death – in all religions, though one surely grieves the loss of loved ones, there are rituals of burial and of mourning and of acceptance – but yet somehow suicide is less acceptable, even a mortal sin. On a particular basis it may or may not be tragic, but it's not the end it's made out to be. It's the ego acting on itself, the thought the material uptake eventually has of limiting itself.

And again, we see how this confusion is essentially that of language itself; it should be clear that the Catholic notion of a judgmental afterlife where one's suicide because of its being a sin would limit access to paradise etc is something I can't accept – believing in such an afterlife at all, where your earthly life is at all relevant or even known, is already so inconceivable to me, why not believe in an afterlife you simply gain access to after-life, regardless of how you died?

[Pio's comment: quoting Ben above he says: "it should be clear that the Catholic notion of a judgmental afterlife where one's suicide because of its being a sin would limit access to paradise etc is something I can't accept -- believing in such an afterlife at all, where your eathly life is at all relevant or even known, is already so inconceivable to me, why not believe in an afterlife you simply gain access to after-life, regardless of how you died?" Please accept these loving comments, Ben, as offered for your consideration specifially. First of all, the "Catholic notion of a judgmental afterlife where one's suicide because of its being sin would limit access to paradise" is not what the Catholic church teaches. We must look at the notion of personal sin as "objective sin" and "subjective sin" to understand what the  Catholic Church fully teaches as to suicide. Objectively, taking anyone's life is against the Fifth Commandment: "Thou shalt not kill." Therefore, to kill an innocent person who is not threatening your own life would be an objective sin against the Fifth Commantment. However, suicide is hardly able to be very objective because the person is so destraught, so emotionally exhausted, so depressed, so stressed that objectivity is just not possible. Therefore, a suicidal person in commiting the act of suicide is not really committing a human act --"actus humanus". Rather the person who commits suicide is only commiting an act of a human -- actus hominis".  Suicide is not a fully human act because at that distressful moment, the person is not fully free to choose between right and wrong. Yes, he does know there is something not right about suicide; but to say he or she has committed a mortal sin that would exclude that person from paradise, would not be Catholic theology at all. It would be bad catechesis and not what the Church teaches. The Catholic church allows the Christian Mass and Christian burial in holy ground of a person who has committed suicide because the Catholic Church does not judge that person's action as objectively sinfull but more subjectively sinful if sinful at all. Sin presupposed a fee act of the will. A suicidal person does not have much control over his faculties of the will because emotion and depression or stress preclude such freedom. Secondly, Ben's comment "why not believe in an after life you gain access to after-life, regardless of how you died?"

Well, let us consider three examples of "how you die". 1) say a criminal kills a classroom full of kids and then -- when confronted by the police -- evades capture by killing himself (much like Hitler did to evade the Russian army occupying Berlin). Well, this suicide was not done to escape punishment and may be more responsible than a teen under depression. Still even in this case, we cannot be sure that person went to hell. Only God knows all the facts; but the point is this, how that man died does matter at to his access to the afterlife. He will have access to the afterlife no matter what. But in what state of happiness or not will he enjoy is another matter. 2) Say, a person in a holding up a bank and killing the manager, then gets killed in a hail of bullets, how this man dies does have a bearing on his afterlife. Should he have access to paradise? He will have an afterlife, because his soul will not be taken out of existence by God. The soul God gives us is forever. It has a beginning but never an end. 3) Say, a little girl like St. Cecelia get three blows from an executioner's ax; and when she was found recently, her body was incorrupt after nearly 17 centuries. Her fingers are placed to signify "three in one" image of the Holy Trinity. She witnessed (was martyred) to the Holy Trinity by her own blood. She lay for three days until she died. Her neck shows a deep gash -- the one that took her life. Now, how Cecilia died does have a very great bearing on how she will access paradise. So, how we die is very important.]

I  can accept the states of being and consciousness attributed to an “afterlife”, it has to be as a “through-life”, as it were, a “supra-life”, something need sentience, a body, and egoic self-awareness to access, but which you access through some epiphanic transcendence that glimpses the transience of the body, the ego, sentience itself. Death, for this experience, cannot be the finite barrier or entrance gate it's taken to be by so many religions. Death does not qualify bliss and agony and universal communion, awareness does. Think of any transformative experience you've had: did your death have anything to do with it? No, empirically it couldn't have. Death is not lived through. You wouldn't have consciously transformed if you hadn't come out on the other side of experience.

Q: What do you mean re: language? How is suicide a matter of language?

A: What comes to mind for me by way of illustration is the issue of animal – versus human – euthanasia. Now, with recent “species-ism” theories like Singer's, we can see how this distinction is an irrational bias to begin with, re: what we as humans see as the discrete hierarchy of life where human interest sits unchallenged at the top of the pyramid in all circumstances; the supposed incomparability of killing, say, a severely, morbidly deformed infant human versus, say, an adult pig, being a biased presupposition, since we know rationally speaking the pig's nervous system is just as much and very likely more capable of registering pain and suffering and awareness of its own murder than the human's – it is by no means necessarily more humane in the pig's case, that is. But overlooking that even, it seems to me the euthanasia performed at everyone's local veterinary clinic every day is justified (as humans reason it to be) only by the insurmountable rift of language. That is, you just can't explain to the abandoned dog that because it's considered an unfriendly breed and hasn't been spayed/neutered etc that it won't be adopted and you see how crowded the shelter is and all so we're very sorry but (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jJZaR_Irxc).

Significantly, the drug used to perform pet euthanasia, generally considered in fact the most humane form of euthanasia (nembutol/pentobarbital), is almost everywhere illegal for humans to obtain for the same purpose (you can evidently get it in Mexico). I read of an eighty-year old man who knew he was going to die a slow, painful, and expensive death from terminal illness having to travel to Mexico and essentially smuggle drugs back home in order to die in peace, while down the block a family dog with a brain tumor (or whatever) is put to sleep with the very same drug, that family convinced of this being  humane. Such is the irrational taboo re: suicide.

I haven't read enough Singer to know if he deals with this, but I feel thinking about suicide in terms of Marxist theory, and vice versa, is something that logically follows from Singer's ethical positions on euthanasia and infanticide, specifically the emphasis on quality of life and one's right to, in a clear-mind, decide whether one's life is worth living. If we look at oppression and exploitation in a global capitalist system, we inevitably encounter problematic issues of quality of life the same as considering the severely deformed infant: a severely, inhumanely oppressed worker in an Apple factory in China has very little prospect for living a fulfilled, quality life. The system of their oppression is so elaborate and inescapable that suicide becomes at once a viable revolutionary and existential response (more and more workers at these factories are in fact committing suicide due to severe exploitation); even though bodily and mentally they may very well have prospects for living a quality life, only by overthrowing the mechanism of their capitalist exploitation would they be able to – which, if we thus engage the complexity of Marxian revolutionary theories (Gramsci's theory of hegemony in particular), we see is impossible without revolt, of which suicide becomes the most immediate and (what's more re: the social whole) possibly the most effective expression.

Which, if we expand it, would open up a discussion of what most people consider the deeply disturbing idea of revolution-as-mass-suicide, the taboo of which we again see is simply irrational. Why, in other words, would this be any more disturbing than the tremendous violence and bloodshed so common to past revolutions? And how is it not a kind of powerful extension of what is otherwise humanity's most sophisticated form of protest, civil disobedience? Suicide under capitalism is a far more complex discussion than it appears, and is mostly skipped over as taboo, in deference to the obligatory life-affirming spirit of so much revolutionary rhetoric.

There are many such taboos and misconceptions. For example, the phrase “someone who is seriously considering suicide”. We all understand this means someone who's perceived to be gravely nearer to executing suicide, someone who might be on what prisons and hospitals call a “suicide watch”. But the truth is, all consideration of suicide is “serious”, we are all gravely implicated. We see the very worth of living come under question, fluidly, the stability of a reassured existence more alarmingly remote, difficult to conjure. Camus famously said the question of suicide is the only primary question in philosophy, as even asking any other suggests we've already answered this first one. We see the seriousness of the subject, the difficulty, isn't only in its solemnity but also what's revealed to be the deeply intense, concentrated intellectual exercise of cross-examining it. The commitment is severe, total, absurd.

Q: Is suicide absurd?

A: You might say absurdity is to suicidal thought what abstraction is to infinity: the conception of the former two, which requires a certain committed awareness, gives way to a profound, disturbing inner experience of the latter two, an experience for which there seems to be, for the person, no apparent end. The failure of language to keep up with the demands of this discussion is in my experience the most absurd and troubling aspect of waking existence in this regard, truly. The thought that experience is limited in this way, and that there exist questions the urgency of which language cannot satisfy, is for me inextricable from suicidal considerations, which makes such a conversation as Pio and I were having and such a post as this extremely delicate, as it is at its core both absurd and infinite (endless).

Q: What causes suicide?

A: Another stigma, the causal. The idea that suicide is something one conceives of as a “solution to life's problems”, a response to those problems, and that it is in this way a “temptation” with a traceable causality, is not generally true. Again, because of language limiting what we can knowably articulate, itself as much a cause as any. Suicidal thought and depression do not necessarily have to do with objective, eventual personal trauma or “life problems” in the ordinary sense, and can have as much to do with (for example) the abstract consideration of the absurd and the infinite, with an existential awareness. Much frustration has come about from well-meaning counselors/therapists/etc overlooking this, as a patient anxiously tries to answer the enormous question “what's wrong?” There are things our minds are just not mechanically set up to think about, yet we find we can direct the light of thought into these dark corners, these blind-spots, with great effort and discipline. All this effort can be in a sense its own trauma, a kind of exhaustive misapplication through which the self-regard necessary to go on living is exhausted out of its relevance. One finds an awareness so far beyond the local needs of the body, those needs become an absurd nuisance. Suicide by self-neglect – rather than self-violence – is thus the most common form, so much so it's often not even seen as such. Many people around you at any given time are likely committing some form of fatal self-neglect, convinced then at least of the limited relevance of their survival.

Q: You've mentioned forms of suicide. Why does suicide take different forms?

A: Aside from obvious opportunity, I don't know. The form of suicide is this absurd creative act. You hear kids jokingly come up with elaborate suicide plans where you really “go out with a bang”, the joke being putting all this effort into something that will ultimately kill you (of course this is less and less a joke in 21^st century America). Wittgenstein often mentioned a perfectly serious philosophical investigation that could be written entirely through jokes  (Why didn't he write it? Alas, he was unfortunately without a sense of humor, the joke goes).  And in this juvenile joking there's a disturbingly real sense of the more elaborate the plan the more worthwhile the act, that this is how the world truly evaluates suicide, as tragic only in its potentially melodramatic banality.

I can tell you from experience that I think of suicide as instantaneous. The point as I see it, being that you are going to die eventually anyway, is that you want to die right now, and so the form should be as near to instantaneous as possible (I won't bother with a list of such forms). Interestingly, these are often construed, in an effort to persuade against them, as more cowardly for their being more instantaneous. Which, as I see it, is nonsense – it's amusing, even, the way prolonged violence is perversely respected in human culture, even in this way. Suicide of any kind requires a kind of concentrated commitment that at least resembles courage; I think it was Hemingway that once defined cowardice as an inability to “suspend functioning of the imagination”, which is perfectly in line with my notion of suicide as a poverty of the imagination (acts of courage near suicide in this suspension, which will inevitably wear out if stressed enough), so that the notion that suicide is cowardly is definitively untrue – I think of Hitler's supposed suicide, for example, which more than anything seems just a way of further sensationalizing his villainy (that he was a coward too), and like so many rhetorical invocations of Hitler just smacks of un-truth, of conceptual fetish – to put it another way, how can we not afford ourselves the right to our own lives, yet claim Hitler denied us the right to his (to punish/kill him how we'd like etc) and was thus a coward?

There is no one form of suicide as there is no one essential suicidal thought, of course. Only an inscrutable result. There are common tendencies and complex patterns, but it's the particulars, the stuff of depression and suicidal thought, the day to day details, that matter most to the person experiencing them. My experience with depression, which began when I was very young, is particular and wedded to my unique experience, but is something I understand to be in many ways common to anyone considering suicide. We want to exaggerate our empathetic relationship by way of consolation, but this often does the exact opposite, trivializing the inner logic of the suicidal person, which – and this is extremely important – is not necessarily irrational. David Foster Wallace notes how people with an inability to overlook the reasonable consideration that their airplane may crash, for reason of logical consistency, are often described as having an “irrational fear of flying” (irrationally described thus, that is). In fact, these people may simply have an inexpedient rationality.

There are aspects of suicidal thought common to or engendered in human experience, and ways in which it is tremendously particular and individuated and craving precise definition; the nausea of waking, conscious life has to do largely with its insistence, its consistency and intensity and tyrannical indifference to subjectivity, and any consolation speaking from beyond this intensity – bland platitudinal warning and argument and moral judgment and so on – appears profoundly, disgustingly irrelevant, because the inner logic is so taught, so thorough in a suicidal state, far more so than we're accustomed to being when we're non-suicidal, as it applies to (truthfully) all waking life, all experience – you can't so much as lift a finger, for reason of the sudden absurdity of doing so (or if you do, the pain of this absurdity is deeply felt). 

Suicide is an existential epiphany. As you stare terribly at the blank you've left on the inscrutable test, you realize this blank to be the most elegant and honest answer imaginable. You accept your inner logic.

Q: If the discussion of suicide is so limited by language and categories, how does one go about talking to someone considering suicide?

A: I think if there's anything to be said to someone considering suicide, it must be said in such a way that contends with the intensity of the experience, while at once relieving it of some of that intensity through empathetic broadening. But can this be done? Do we gauge the success of this simply by the person's not committing suicide? Have we, I mean, genuinely helped them or have we just talked them down from suicide, because suicide is considered a heinous illegality or sin or whatever. In this way speaking to a suicidal person teaches us how perilous speech is generally – it's as much about the taboo of the illegitimacy of conversational language for dealing with the question as it is the taboo of morbidity. We want to know that we are not alone in life but that we are also somehow in control, that we are neither so-alone as to be lost to the suffocating responsibility of selfhood nor so-not-alone as to be indistinguishable and without privacy and sensitivity to self. If you've experienced suicidal thinking you know these twin macro-micro fears are essentially the same, and that there is no essential for/against argument for suicide as it can only be generalized in a way that doesn't speak to the experience (not to everyone's), the way blank or incomplete answers on tests are (illegitimately) generalized as wrong answers.

So I just have to say: I have no set moral stance concerning suicide. I do not think it's necessarily immoral, nor is it necessarily tragic, justifiable, avoidable, painful, painless...Successful suicide results in death, but death, as Wittgenstein says, is not an experience, as it is not lived through. Whether one believes in an afterlife of whatever kind, whether one understands death as finality or transformation or transfiguration or whatever, it is still “not lived through”, it is not framed on either side by waking worldly experience. This is very important: death (whether the result of successful suicide or otherwise) does not ultimately qualify suicidal thought, nor does it anything else. Death conceptually lends a significance to waking life that, yes, it otherwise might not have, but neither is this the only significance it might have.

Which is why when Pio suggested calling this post “Thinking of Suicide? Read this”, I asked it be reconsidered, as that title already suggests an argumentative stance that, to the reader in a suicidal state (at least, it would be for me in that state), is unattractively resolved, convinced. The most productive conversations regarding suicide, for me, have begun with mutual irresolution. Suicidal thought is at once tremendously dynamic and hugely stubborn, fixated, and can be, as Camus says, a following of logic to the point of death – which we forget is essentially the arc of life itself, the logic of transience, of mortality, and so not necessarily at all extraordinary, statistically or conceptually, not necessarily irrational if one broadens the scope beyond mere human concerns. Argumentative stances that appear rigidly convinced can seem by dint of their conviction either irrelevant or, what's worse, tragically vulnerable in their insufficiency.

Q: If you can argue your point on this, as you did in asking to rename the post, isn't that ability itself something to live for, something to flesh out and prolong? Surely there's no exhausting the intellect if it's aware of inexhaustible questions and conversations?

A: One of the worst feelings when suicidal is the awareness someone's conviction that suicide is empirically wrong is itself empirically wrong, that their logic is flawed or that you can easily dismantle it if called on. You don't want to, you don't want to be powerful in this way, not necessarily. You don't want to explain to someone who's convinced you simply don't understand that you do in fact understand, that that's precisely it: this burden of understanding, of awareness, of consciousness itself, and the enveloping burden of going on trying to communicate this consciousness somehow to others, others who are differently conscious and likely unable to receive the articulation as you privately conceived of it.

The truth is, intellect, regardless of the inexhaustibility of the subjects its versed in, is absolutely exhaustible, absurdly, as so often contradicts and is thus a liability to a growing global capitalist system that requires it not only be exhausted but that it be exhausted in an ever-predictable ever-refined way. Everything is increasingly set up against intellectual exercise, it's the plain truth. 

Which is why, ultimately, Camus' most-compelling opening gambit for this very conversation – that there is only one primary philosophical question etc – has, while it continues to impress me as a compelling argumentative strategy, left me unconvinced. We do not necessarily experience life this way. We do not necessarily wake up and consciously make the decision whether to live or die, that is just not the experience. That decision, in either case, is in fact very rarefied and deeply conditional, in ways that don't extend to all parameters of our conscious life. That we go about our day does not necessarily mean we consciously decided sometime before that the day was worth going about, any more than a person who lives with constant, suffocating thoughts of killing themselves (but hasn't yet) has chosen to live. Existentialism as a philosophical-literary tradition has always had, it seems to me, this problem of confronting only a few derivative tiers of absurdity, the tiers that are most attractive and of conventional literary interest. Confrontations with the absurdity of absurdity (of absurdity of absurdity...ad absurdum), because this becomes increasingly implausible and unsexy and disturbing and long long long, are extremely rare – David Foster Wallace's last, unfinished novel, The Pale King, is a sublime example of such a daring confrontation, which was in fact interrupted by Wallace's own suicide, very significantly.

Q: Alright, so if suicide is not necessarily right or wrong, why is it perceived as such a tragedy in society? Why is it widely considered a problem, something to be avoided at all costs?

A: Taboo, basically. The discussion of suicide often ends up just being a discussion of death. And one might say that death, something we collectively, fundamentally fear, and which we thus fetishize as taboo, is profaned in suicide by this seemingly absurd acceptance by another mortal soul supposed to fear death above all else. How can one accept what one is programmed to fear? The thought disturbs us, in its morbidity and perversion of will. But I think, more to the point, it disturbs us inasmuch as it's a failure. It's a failure not only to survive, but a failure to even want to. The urgency of the survival instinct and the prolonged effort of survival are doubly insulted. Here the species is, suffering and subsisting and reproducing, and the suicide seems to subvert the whole project. It offends us.

Q: So then does it offend us more in terms of death or in terms of the individual's decision to die?

A: Well, not only that, but, again the confused language of the categories: to what extent does the person die (even this, given all the religious assumptions of an afterlife, is not certain in conversation) and to what extent did they choose to die? The classic question of free will: alright, so the person kills themselves: to what extent? This seems absurd, but such is the discussion.

We can commonsensically perceive the man wavering on the building ledge is about to jump, not merely fall, but we wonder whether the rescuer next to him speaking calm life affirmations isn't nearer to suicide, figuratively and literally, than we are on the ground – he has, after all, willfully stepped out onto the ledge into the situation, without any expressed desire to die, but has, we think, “come to terms with death” in order to perform his task. All of us, on the ground and the ledge and anywhere, are mortal beings coming ever closer to death, yet we perceive these two up on the ledge as being temporally and conceptually closer to it. I think this is essentially an absurd illusion, the clear Hollywood distinction between the two. The roles of the jumper and rescuer are nowhere near as discrete as Hollywood would have us believe, but are rather continuously, fluidly exchanging. The rescuer might, for example, slip and start to fall, and the jumper might reach down to help them. The jumper might slip accidentally and, because of it being an accident, ask to be saved. One might think of that scene in (I hate to mention this movie, but) Titanic, where some officer compulsively shoots a passenger, and, consumed with shame, promptly shoots himself – the atmosphere of the situation is so urgent, rushed, and “nearer death” that one doesn't perceive this as a suicide in the ordinary sense. There are “just” suicides, where someone kills themselves in order to save another person, which are lamentable but accordingly less troubling than were someone to kill themselves for private reasons. That is, not all suicide is offensive even.

You hear people describe suicide as “selfish” which, again, is just absurd. This reaction is at most a form of “what's in it for me?” – that is, every bit if not more selfish than the act. 

In Bergman's film Winter Light, a man commits suicide, ostensibly shattered by a loss of faith, a sense of cosmic abandonment (he confronts a priest with his fears only to have the priest share his own fears and uncertainties with a terrifying and un-vocational honesty), and thus abandons his pregnant wife. The reality of worldly atrocities instills fear of a godless world of incomprehensible suffering in the man, which instills in the priest an intense urge to share his awareness of the same, which sures the sense of abandonment in the man, who resolves to die, thus tragically abandoning his wife and child.

(here is the clip, beginning after the spoken letter circa four minutes in: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AYi5YW66sA&feature=related)

This circular abandonment, God of the world, the world of its people, the priest of his vocation and faith, the man of his will to live and of his wife, is tautological. There is no point of selfish perversion, rather everything unfolds out of itself. The sentiment of the suicide is one of absurd fatigue. The man hasn't simply ceased to love his wife and child, but has lost touch with (rather, seen beyond) the whole strategem of tautological relationships that enabled meaning at all for him. The relation of the abandonment no longer exists, he is incapable of himself abandoning or being received at all.

Q: What is the benefit of suicide? If you were in the position of that man in the clip, convinced of a cosmic pointlessness, how would it follow that suicide is the answer? Why wouldn't suicide, like anything else, appear meaningless and impossible to justify?

A: I think the basic answer is that one cannot empirically benefit from suicide. It's impossible. One cannot stand by the suicidal decision, one can't even receive relief – the whole mechanism of benefit is worldly and bodily and conditional. But I can say that I think the nature of this question – which is probably the best question one can ask re: suicide – is still overlooking something very crucial. The kind of pro's/con's delineation it suggests is requiring a kind of critical faculty, an imagination that suicide exhausts as absurd, impossible. Again, suicide is not necessarily a “solution”, it is just something that happens. It is one of many ways to end up dead. One might realize the absurdity of the question if you also ask: what is the benefit of death?

Q: So, if you were in the position of Bergman's priest, what would you tell the man?

A: What makes that incredible scene so painful, is that the priest is essentially brutalizing the man with honesty, and we realize that, in the language of the film, the man had come to the priest to be consoled with lies, lies no longer any more distinguishably profane than honesty. The priest is like a doctor bearing bad news to a dying patient, realizing in the process that he too is dying in exactly the same way, and overstepping all professional decorum needs to commune with the patient in exactly the vulnerable way the patient does him. The truth is disorder.

[Pio's comment: "Truth is NOT a 'disorder'; but the utterance of it in the mouth of fool is disordered." (A the Book of Proverbs states)  More precisely for our discussion, St. John said: "Do the truth; but do it in charity." So, the truth is not a "disorder" but the truth must be like a diamond that has the right setting. Peter told Jesus: "Far be it that this would happen to you. ...Do not go to Jerusalem!"  Peter was telling Jesus the truth and even seemed to think that he was being charitable; however, Peter was repeating the temptation from the Evil one to tempt Jesus to NOT go to the cross and redeem all mankind. Jesus respond quite strongly to Peter as He was really addressing the Temptor who stirred Peter's imagination to say these things. By giving voice to the voice of the Temptor, Peter gave life to a mere idea..but by speaking out the words of the Temptor, Peter gave life to them. Jesus response therefore was the Truthful one: "Get behind me, Satan!" I am sure Peter was taken aback!  The truth here was "brutal" and in this case should be.  However, Benjamin is right in saying that kindness should come first while speaking the truth to a man who is tempted toward suicide. The word of truth to a man who is tempted toward suicide must be a word of Love not merely facts or reasoning. How does one show love to a man tempted toward suicide? BY LISTENING NOT SPEAKING. BY LISTENING IN LOVE..WITH GREAT CARING AND UNDERSTANDING..EVEN REPEATING BACK TO THE TEMPTED MAN WHAT YOU HEAR HIM SAYING IN TERMS THAT ARE CLEARER THAN WHAT THE MAN IS SPEAKING TO YOU. THAT IS LOVE!] 

So, I don't know. I could only say this: because I have some juices of imagination still flowing at present, because I have investigations I still have the feel of continuity for, because moments of consciousness can still appear to me consequential, connected, ordered, I do not want to die, and don't want to see you die, because I am still capable of finding you interesting and relevant to my experience in ways you apparently aren't. But the truth is that you are not necessarily wrong. I feel, if anything, if you haven't experienced suicidal thinking, you're (for lack of a better phrase) missing out, whether your life is full and appreciative and aware or not. I think there is a severity and absurdity to waking life you either haven't recognized or haven't confronted yet. Suicide is very much about what it really is to examine a life and to require ecstatic deliverance. One's life is already on a mortal course. And contrary to the cliché that we have an innate desire to learn and to understand, we have a far greater innate desire to sit tight and unquestioningly accept the world, where no examination is ultimately necessary. You're exercising the most powerful critical mechanism you have, and whether you live or die you are presently accessing something of the best of you. Suicide, tragic or not, denotes a kind of investment or sensitivity one has to be alive enough in the first place to experience. And the truth is nothing I say will convince you to not commit suicide unless it strikes at some latent imaginative capacity that is far too much your inner property for me to be able to predict or indicate. Art has, I think, statistically higher chances of accessing it. You need good art.

- Benjamin Bourlier

[Pio's comment: Did you hear this profound statement from Benjamin -- these words of Hope -- which all young people should hear:

"Because I  have some juices of imagination still flowing at present, because I have investigations I still have the feel of continuity for, because moments of consciousness
can still appear to me as consequential, connected, ordered, I DO NOT WANT TO DIE, AND DO NOT WANT TO SEE YOU DIE, BECAUSE I AM STILL CAPABLE OF FINDING YOU INTERESTING AND RELAVENT to my experience in ways you are apparently aren't.....You need good art!"

Yes, Benjamin feels that if we truly confront life, then the concept of death will appear as a reality. That is true; but the Psalmist addresses this issue thus: "I PLACE LIFE AND DEATH BEFORE YOU; CHOOSE LIFE!"

These are my final words of comment for this magnificent discussion that came about by a simple dialogue between Bejamin Bourlier and me over a coffee table in my home. As I listened to the answered to my questions that I lovingly and caringly presented to Benjamin, I instinctively knew that his answers - [and my comments] were not meant for us alone...but all to be shared with YOU."

Peace and love,

Pio Peter Zammit  God bless all of you with abundant LIFE and HOPE, abundant imagination! ]

[See Pio's Proverb 162: "IMAGINATION: how ours mirrors God's" Please see Benjamin's comments on this blog which shows he is listening to me and I am listening to him: which the true antidote to suicide. Benjamin so much appreciated this blog on imagination as to write these comments from his heart:

"Pio, I think this may be your best blog entry! Certainly my favorite so far. I'm very fond, as an improvising musician, of your notion of the big bang as an improvisational spontaneity, and your notion of an (ever) accelerating universe as creative anticipation..."

 -- The end -- .or better said...The beginning...of a new life for all of us: you and me! Amen. And Tiny Tim really got it right when he said: "...God bless us all!"  God has! And says to you and me right now: "I gave you your life because I thought you would like it!"]

Again: Peace and love, Pio

Pio's Proverb 134: "Do you love Me?"

    Today's Gospel for the Mass of Blessed Pope John Paul II gives Jesus' three great questions to Peter and to all of us: "Do you love Me more than these?" ..."Feed my lambs"..Do you love Me?"..."Tend my sheep..."Do you love Me?" This last question was the one that Jesus was asking if Peter would love Him even unto death.

Why does the Church select this reading for Blessed Pope John Paul II?  It was selected because Blessed John Paul II answered those three questions as the successor of St. Peter.

Pio's Proverb 133: The Bad Thief: Where is he?

We all know the story of the Good Thief: Dismas who at the last minute accepted Jesus. But Jesus said: "Unless you are born again of the water and the Spirit, you will not enter the Kingdom of God." Well, then, why did not Jesus from the cross tell St. John to quick and get some water and baptize Dismas who had just accepted Jesus as his Lord and Savior? No need to do that: Dismas was baptized already by desire; he was baptized by the Holy Spirit "hic et nunc" ("here and now"). Dismas was not only baptized by the Holy Spirit, he was the first saint to ever be canonized. Jesus said: "This day you will be with Me in paradise." A canonized saint is one that the Church declares to be certainly in heaven. Jesus did that whole process in a few words.

But what of the "bad thief"?  We do not even know his name? Can you imagine: if a person is on "death row", he would want to have a priest to hear his comfession or a minister to pray over him and reconcile him to God. But the bad thief did not want either. But the "bad thief" was sent a minister without his asking. Jesus - by the Holy Spirit - sent Dismas to convert the bad thief. The good thief admonished the bad thief and declared that they both were suffering rightly for their crimes but this man, Jesus, "had done nothing wrong".
Dismas said to the bad thief: "Do you not fear God!" It is amazing; but Jesus sent a criminal to convert a criminal because the two knew each other. They had shared the same cell. They shared the same fears. Dismas was the perfect minister for the bad thief. Everyone on death row would love to have the presence of Jesus in Holy Communion or at least in the Word of God spoken to him. But the bad theif has Jesus, Himself, the Son of God at his side. Did not the bad thief also hear the centurian say: "Truly this was an innocent man. Truly this was the Son of God!" Remember, both Dismas and the bad thief survived Jesus. Jesus had died first. The legs of the two thieves were broken so that they could not pushed themselves up for a breath. Jesus was too weak to push Himself up. But the thieves, therefore, died after the death of Jesus. Both of them were able to hear the centurian's great testamony and declaration of faith in Jesus. Most criminals curse their executioners because the executioners are hurting them. But Jesus was silent except for His words: "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they are doing."

As far a the Gospel writers tell us, the bad thief did not repent. Rather, he said: "If you are the Christ, get us down from here; save yourself and us."  Now, let us look at those words more deeply. The devil when tempting Jesus said: "If you are the Christ, command these stones to become bread.." and "If you are the Christ, cast yourself down from here.."   Again, the devil speaking in the words of the bad thief gives Jesus His last temptation: "If you are the Christ..."  Then....another great temptation: "Show your power by coming down from the cross."  This is what the crowd has just said: "If you are the Son of God, come down from that cross; and we will believe in You."  Jesus could easily have come down from the cross and incinerated the entire crowd. But the Sacred Heart does not do that. Jesus even told James and John "No" to their request to send fire and brimstone against the town that would not accept Jesus. Jesus even joked about that request by calling James and John from then of "Sons of thunder!"  No...the Sacred Heart of Jesus pierced by the lance was exposed. The rays of mercy - Blood and Water - came from His side. Sister Faustina, centuries later would actually see those rays of mercy. For God is never more God in our lives as when He is forgiving us. But God will not force us to love Him. We have free choice. We can freely reject Jesus. Jesus has not come for peace but for division: for us to choose good or evil, life or death, to choose Jesus or Satan.

But what happened to the bad thief who continued to be used by the devil even to the very end. Was not his conduct a sign of who he was following?  We cannot put anyone in hell...not even Judas...for we do not know the state of a man's souls seconds before his death. Could not the bad thief - seconds before he died - have looked over at Jesus and said: "My Lord and my God!" We will never know on this earth; but one day we may just meet the "bad thief" in heaven...along with Judas. In all the 2000 year history of the Church, there is no process that condemns a person to hell and declares him or her to be in hell. No...the Church does not do that because of Jesus' words of mercy to the woman caught in adultrey: "Has any one condemned you?" "No sir," she said. Jesus replied: "Neither will I condemn you. Go and sin no more." Jesus is not the accuser. Satan - whose name means "The Accuser" is the one who accuses us. Jesus is busy redeeming and forgiving us.  Jesus even tried to get Judas to repent by telling him: "Friend, do you betray the Son of Man with a kiss." Jesus was giving Judas a chance to repent right then and there. With every temptation there is a "way out" because God never let us be tempted beyond our strength.

So, did St. Dismas and the bad thief ever share the "same cloud" in heaven?  They shared the same cell, the same cross and the same Jesus at thier deaths. Let's see. We may be very surprised to see people in heaven we never thought could ever be there: the bad thief, Judas, Hitler......let us just see. Amen.

{Please note that there are some people in Hell. Our Lady of Fatima showed Hell to the three children who jumpted back in great fear. She said: "This is where poor sinners go because there was no one to pray for them." The children asked out Lady: "Why don't they repent?"  Our Lady said: "They do not want to."  So, these are souls that even at the last moment - "out of the body and present to the Lord" - they reject Jesus' offer of His merciful forgiveness. A saintly soul saw one of these final encounters where a man who led a blasphemous life all his life, and Jesus asked him: "Will you now accept me as your Lord and Savior?"  Jesus was willing to forgive all to save him from Hell for all eternity. The man answered with blasphemies and profane language. Jesus sadly lowered His hand thus letting him go to Hell which the man freely choose instead of accepting the Holy Spirit's offer of Mercy and Forgiveness. This is an eternal sin: the sin against the Holy Spirit's final offer of total forgiveness. But God cannot force someone to accept Jesus's Love. Remember, Jesus already suffered and died for this man sins. But the man refuses the atonement that Jesus has already made for his sins. This refusal is in that supreme moment of "out of the body and present to the Lord" is irrevocable just as the bad angel's decison was irrevocable.}

Let us pray:

Lord, Jesus, please be with every man and woman on death row today and always.  Let them see You hanging there beside them and see You dying for them. Let them all - and all people in the state of mortal sin - totally repent by accepting Jesus as their Lord and Savior by accepting the Holy Spirit's forgiveness and Mercy..and then take Your hand, Jesus, as You lead them into Paradise. In Your name. Amen."

Love, Pio

Pio's Proverb 132: How Beautiful Are You?

At conception, God created your soul out of nothing as the most beautiful He could make you to be with special gifts and graces known only to Him. He made you beautiful because He is beautiful, the Creator of all beauty in the spiritual relm and the physical relm. It is a mystery that each soul that He has created from Adam and Eve to the present - all - reflect his goodness and beauty - especially reflecting His Image and Likeness like no other in creation. Animals and mammals and birds and insects and fish are NOT made in the image and likeness of God because they cannot "know" and "love" and "create" as we can. But if we look into the mirror, we do not see our full beauty. Only God can see it; but sometimes He in His goodness reveals it to us a special times. Such is what happened to me today.

For His own purposes, God showed me the beauty in and of my soul for a brief moment or two at 1:42 pm after Holy Mass and Holy Communion. Jesus was in me and made me to reflect His goodness and Love. I had asked Him to give me His Heart in exchange for mine so that I could love as He loves with His Heart. For those few seconds He answered my prayer. I spiritually felt outside of myself looking in and saw with spiritual eyes what Jesus was seeing. I felt awed. I felt reverent toward myself that I never have experienced in this unique way. It was as if God the Father was saying to me as He recognized Jesus in me and said to me: "This is my beloved son in whome I am well pleased." It was an affirmation that humbled ne to the core because this beauty - Jesus in me - was intrinsic and integral to my soul. There was a mini-hypostatic union between Jesus and me that the Father was delighting in. I felt a reverence and awe and deep respect for myself because God was showing me the Beauty He was creating in me - that I was a work in progress.  There is a scripture - from Proverbs - that I have read and have given to my children often; and now it has come back to me in a new way. The words are: "My son, my daughter, with true humility have self esteem and prize yourself as you ought." The author of these words, Solomon, was inspired by the Spirit to be help us to know that we are beautiful in God's eyes and that we belong to God. Once, while at prayer, I was in the woods by a brook and said to God the Father: Father, I can see you in the clouds, in the blue sky, in these yellow flowers and can hear you in the wind in the trees and in this babbling brook." Now I was only talking to God casually and whimsically; but God the Father who was listening did not take them casual at all. He reacted emotionally and spoke to me in my heart and will ever be the most profound experience of my life. His voice echoed down the halls of eternity. There was a distinct echo as the Eternal God spoke from His eternalness to little me these powerful words: "YOU BELONG TO ME!" His words were distinctively taking posession of my entire being. I felt de-nuded in that all that I am and have belong to him: my body, mind, age, clothes, education, personality, longings and dreams and eternal destiny - ALL - belonged to Him. I waited to see if He would take me home that very minute because His declaration was itself so powerful and Fatherly since God the Father was indeed the father of every person He has made. After 8 minutes of waiting, I realized that He was not taking me home just yet. So, to respond to his great declaration, I made one of my own and said: "Father, if I so belong to You, then You must belong to me, as well." That was the end of the encouter and I left for home. But I never was the same after that because I did not believe in God's existence and love any more. I knew and experienced God's existence and love - His Fatherly and tender love for me. I have never had to believe in God after that. I had been to the mountain top like Peter James and John who saw Jesus transfigured. I had experienced God Himself in His eternal existence and love and extremely particular love for me that He would take eternal time out to tell me about His love for me. Did this little prayer of seeing Him and hearing Him in nature please Him so much? Who can say what pleases a Dad, an Abba?  A baby in the crib can make a smile, and Dada goes gaga! Kids can delight their parents without knowing a thing about it. God does DELIGHT in us. He loves us and see His own Beauty in us:

"You grew exceedingly beautiful, fit to be a queen. Your fame spread among the nations on account of your beauty, for it was perfect because of my splendour that I had bestowed on you, says the Lord God."
                                                                                                                                        Ezekiel 16:14

[He] came in glory so that the people of Israel could not gaze at Moses' face because of the glory of his face.."                                                                                                                              2 Corinthians 3:7

"And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit."                                                                                                                             2 Corinthians 3:18

We are destined for eternal gazing on the Beauty of God {Beatific Vision} and to reflect God's Beauty in our very being - the Beauty He has created in us from our conception. This is why Our Lady said: "My soul magnifies the Lord; and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior." She more than any only-human creature reflects the Beauty of God more than any saint or angel.  She is God's most Beautiful creature.
But what of us? What of all the rest of us? Will we attain the Beauty God has intended for us? How Beautiful will we be. Let us give an example to answer all those questions:

Once St. Teresa of Avila  dropped to her knees in seeing a vision and adored God before her. Then, Jesus appeared to her and asked Teresa: "What are you doing?" She said, "I am adoring the Beauty of God before me." Jesus said: "No, child, what you are seeing as so beautiful is your own soul revealed to you by God."  God revealed this to Teresa for a purpose just as He told affimed Jesus from the heavens that sounded to others like thunder. Do we not to the same to our kids when we tell them:"Good job!" or "You are so beautiful!" or "I love you!" Once Jesus said to Teresa: "You are Teresa of Jesus; and I am Jesus of Teresa!"  The exchange of beauty and love is evident here. Jesus in us is the very source of our beauty because the primordial beauty at our conception is exploded into the universal beauty of Jesus Himself at our baptism and given enhancement and more perfection every time we go to Holy Communion because Jesus for whom the whole of creation was made for is in us and we are "In Him, through Him and for Him" during Holy Communion like no other time in our lives. In Holy Communion, Jesus not only shares His Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity, He shares His very Beauty with us and makes us to become beautiful as well. Our beauty is Jesus' life in us. St. Paul even said: "I live not I, but Christ lives in me." And the Father sees Jesus' Beauty in us. And...one day Jesus will present us to the Father as beautiful as He can make us to be. Our creation is therefore on-going....we are not complete yet....but will be so...and God will harvest us when we are at the peak of perfection and beauty that Jesus can make us to be...and not before.

Well, we come to our final question: "How Beautiful Are You?" God knows and may just reveal it to you in many ways: When your husband says to you in awe: "You are beautiful!" When Your parents tell you :"You are beautiful!" When your children say "You are beautiful". And especially when God Himself tells you directly in your heart: "You are beautiful.....You belong to Me."

I say the above paragraph to you, my loving readers, and especially to someone whom I love most dearly: Margaritka of the Ukraine. She is the most beautiful woman I have ever known and her soul radiates unto her body to make her to be a vibrant-living-bright-radiant Star! I hope by her reading all of this particular blog,  my words will give her more and deeper awareness of her inner beauty that may not even be  fully known to herself before. Yes, I do tell her often: "You are so beautiful" which is the way she hears how beautiful she is from God through me. She once wrote to me: "You make me feel beautiful!" I am so glad she feels that affirmation from me. But I tell her that the beauty has always been there but she has not seen herself in the mirror of me and she must now see herself in the Mirror of God: how He sees her now and for all eternity. My little mirror is clear and accurate and pure; but God's is an infinite mirror..that is loving and ever creative. But I pray very much today that God's reveals directly to her how beautiful her soul is in His sight. She reflects His Beauty; and only He knows from all eternity the fullness of her Beauty. He sees her from conception to even millions of heavenly years into the future..where her beauty will grow and grow as she looks at the Beaftific Vision, the Beauty of God, that He will reveal to her more and more throughout eternity. We will be awed and wondered by God's constant revelation of His Beauty. He will never run out of these revelations for all eternity because He is infinite. We will grow more and more in love for God as He reveals His Beauty more and more. Our souls will also reflect His Beauty more and more as we grow to be more and more Beautiful as we contemplate His Beatific Vision. Thus our Beauty before God in both our resurrected bodies and in our blessed souls will increase more and more for all eternity. Thus, in asking the question: "How Beautiful Are You?" - we should ask "How Beautiful are you now; and how Beautiful will you become?" Your eternal Beauty is beyond your imagination. Thus: "Eye has not seen, nor ears heard nor has it ever entered the imagination of man what God has in store for those who love Him!"

So, Margaritka, please understand fully and deeply when I say to you: "Dearest Margaritka, you are so so very Beautiful!"  I love you!

Let us Pray:

Father - Loving Papa of us all - we love You. "With You, Dear Father, we shall ALWAYS be! Thank you for creating us beautiful and for the Beauty you see us becoming - more and more - for all eternity as we grow in love more and more for You as You reveal more and more of Your Beauty with us...Your beloved children.

We freely, without fear or coercing, without worry or doubt, decide to LOVE You with all our hearts, minds, will, emotions, gratitude and longings.  You made us for Yourself. You do not even let anything on this earth completely fill us because there is a place in our hearts that You created just for You. That place cannot be filled by anything or any body else. We thank You for all the gifts You give us in this life: family, love, intellect, beauty. But "Our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee."  Help us to not place anything or anyone in Your reserved spot in our hearts. We do not have to worry about anything else anyway because the Psalmist has said in 37: 3-7: "Delight in the Lord; and He will GIVE you the desires of your heart." You have said: "First seek the Kingdom of God; and all things will be given to you besides"...and "Ask and you shall receive; seek and you shall find; knock and it will be opened unto to you."  So, what is left to do, Father, but to just walk in gratitude and love for You? When you do tak us home, let it be like Enoch swepted into Your arms. All this we ask in Jesus' Name. Amen

So much love, Pio xo

Pio's Proverb 131: "RACISM" is Racist!

Any referral or catergorizing of peoples into a "brown, black, white and yellow race" is intrinsically "racist"!
Why? The reason is that the implication is that there are brown, black, white and yellow races. Absolutely the plural of the world "race" is racist because there is ONLY ONE RACE: the Human Race! The brown, black, white and yellow people are different not as to "race" but only different in "nationality".  We have on this earth: Hispanic, Native Americans, African Americans, African Africans, Italian, German, Irish, Polish, Middle Eastern, Arabic, Asian Americans, Asian Asians, Maltese Americans, Maltese Maltese, Croations, Greeks peoples and many more nationalities.  So when I receive an application or any form that has the category "Race", I cross it out vigorously and write the word "nationality" with a note that there is only one race: the human race.

The KKK hanged many African Americans because of the "false abstractions" that these people were less than they were. The Nazis killed millions of Jews as the "final soluton" because the Nazis believed that Jews were less than they were. It is a self-lie to ever think we are better than someone else based on nationality.

Racism can even infilter our subconscious: I heard someone say: "I am dating a nice man; but he is black." That is a somewhat racist statement because when someone is dating an Italian, they do not say: "I am dating a nice man; but he is Italian." We do not say: "I am dating a nice girl; but she is German." Racism can be subtle. The statement "but he is black" means that he will not be accepted or that somehow a black person is just lower than other nationalities.  Let us never pre-fix with the word "but" when referring to an African American because they have exactly the same dignity as our own. We cannot let some segments of racism actually become part of our thinking as to have to use the word "but" when referring to African Americans. In God's eyes, they are just as precious as any other nationality. "Black is beautiful" is a good standard. In the Song of Songs written by King Solomon, there is a line (in the Latin) that says: "Niger sum et pulcra." - "I am black and beautiful". Solomon inspired by the Holy Spirit puts into the mouth of his wife these words that categorize herself as "black and beautiful."

Additionally, there are two Saints that stand out among others that are distinctively African: St. Augustine, Doctor of the Church, and a medical doctor and Dominican brother who was the son of an African woman and a Spanish father. He took care of the sick slaves on board ships. Africans are very precious, precocious, loving, caring and saintly.

Our Father who are in Heaven, please give us Your eyes and Your love when looking at all Your nationalities. Let us not displease You by thinking that my nationality is better than any other nationality. Please correct the world in the plural misuse of the singular word "race".  Most of all, let us know that we are all members of one family: the Human Race" whom You created and are Father of us all. Also, let us realize that we all on this earth come from two parents common to all of us: Adam and Eve which makes us all brothers and sisters of one another. All this we ask in Jesus' Name. Amen.

Love, Pio  

Pio's Proverb 130: "Angels in Blue"

On Saturday afternoon, I drove to a seemingly safe stop to clean out my car. As I was finishing sweeping out my car, a tall lanky man in his fourties approached me and explained he had a bottle of cooking oil and wanted me to take him to the store to buy some chicken for his kids. I had $10 dollars and intended to take him to the store and buy him the chicken since he said he only had $2.00. I was about to take him, when a Chesterfield Police car swooped in behind us, an officer got out and put the man's hand behind his back and asked for his ID. He put the man in his car and did a check. He never did released that man while I was there. I was surprised to see another Chesterfield Police car come behind the first one as back-up. I told these officers that they were angels. They admitted that they were angels. And I said: "Angels in Blue!" which they just loved to hear.

The first officer came over to me and said. "He would have robbed you; told you he had a gun even if he did not. He would have robbed you." I gave the bag the man was carrying that had the cooking oil in it. When I picked it up, it was very  heaven. It must have had something metal in it. Perhaps a gun.

I was amazed that God would protect me in this wonderful way. I was going to let the man in my car and drive him to the store. But that is what he wanted not to go to store but to rob me. My  heart was in the right place. I wished I had thought of giving him the $10 I had on me. But I did ask them to drive him to the store. They seemed to smile in the way that said: "We have him in custody." 

Now it is not strange that God would send me two "Angels in Blue" to protect me even during an act of charity. But God was telling me to be careful and to help others without taking them into my car. I said a prayer for that man. But I was touched by God who was watching me so closely. Another 15 seconds, and I would have taken him into my car. I was in a good neighbor across from the Baptist Church. I thought I was as safe as possible. But I was not. Jesus said: "Be innocent a doves; and wise a serpents." I am a little wiser and more in awe at God's watchful and loving eyes on me. But God loves the man, too. May good come out of his interrogation and stay with the Police so that they may know his needs and help him, too.

Father, thank you for watching all of us, Your kids, and keeping us from harm. Bless this man and the "Angels in Blue" You sent to protect me. Thank you for all policemen and women who are laying their lives on the line each day for us. Protect them as they protect us. In Jesus' Name. Amen.

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Let us fast forward to July 17, 2012 @ 11: 00 am: I was driving East on 23 Mile road doing normal speed..when I saw a dark sedan coming up fast behind me...I waited for him to slow down or break or swerve around me. All this happened in about four seconds. The man did not break to stop but hit me doing between 40 to 50 miles an hour. The impact was tremendous...enough to total my mint classic 1979 Lincoln four door Continental. This was the case even when both vehicles: his and mine were going in the same direction. Had I put on the breaks or swerved myself, I may have been killed outright. I believe that God used my big Lincoln to stop this man's car and save the man's life because he was unconscious at the wheel...blacked out or was so high that he could not perceive anything. The impact must have awakened him because he did pull over and stop about four blocks ahead of me. Four witnesses were at the scene..one lady had tears in her eyes as she saw me on the ground waiting to be transported by ambulance to hospital. Another man told me that he had been observing this man for 15 minutes..since he had seen the driver staggering in a mall...and followed hiim to call the police...the Chesterfield Police did arrive quickly...very quickly...seems like less than a minute..

The Officer to arrive was Office VanAcker. Let me describe him: He is a gentle giant in blue. He took over everthing with innate leadership and authority. He was personable, kind, circumspect, totally aware of everything and everybody..took charge with a caring kind of authority that seem to come from the heart. He was truly an "Angel in  Blue" and I told him so. Officer VanAcker put a face on the Chesterfield Police Department that is the Best Face possible. He should be Sargeant and even Police Chief one day because he is the best that can be. Perhaps though he was only reflecting the Police Management style and caring of Chief Bruce Smith who is the present Chief: "apples do not fall far from the tree" - officers reflect their superior officers...I have an MA in indusrial pschology from UDM and know management styles. The best management style is 100% for the customer and 100% for the Company. That true and best management style is Officer VanAkers style and must be reflecting Chief Smith'g style. All of the same goes for Officer Unger who took care of the needs of the other driver and helped him to get the medical help me needed so much. I appreciate the Health and Saftey document that Officer Unger wrote up with all the details of the accident - even interviewing eye witnesses...as well as the main police report that Officer Vanacker constributed to as well. Both Angels in Blue did such a complete job helping all; and I am still benefitting from their kindness and work. I am benefitting from all the years of experience and kindness and compassion from their goodness and years of experience both Officers have shown and are behind these men: these Angels in Blue!

I need to thank the personnel of Medstar Ambulance as well. They were kind, compassionate, courteous, very professonal and life saving! God bless them and keep them safe on their runs!!as they save lives every day!!!

Peace and great thanks to these Officers and Chief..and love to them. I am out of the hospital now suffering from trauma..but I will fully recover...seems that the Chesterfield police saved my life twice already....you can surely feel safe and protected by these men who put their own life on the line everyday...be grateful to them..Greet them..and pray for them that God will protect them on and off duty...God bless them every one...as they come to work today..and every day..Let us support our Police Officers...by our gratitude..by voting for every millage that will ever come up to support them..and to pray for them and their safety. God bless them every one.!
Pio Peter Zammit of New Baltimore/Chesterfield

Pio's Proverb 129: The Mass in 150 AD.

Not only did St. Paul tell of his breaking bread in the way Jesus did at the Last Supper and saying that "Is this not a participation in the Body and Blood of the Lord?", but Justin the Martyr in the year 150 AD also wrote a letter to Anonitus telling of the Mass that is essentially the same as it is today. He said that readings from the Prophets and the Apostles are proclaimed at Mass: thus readings from the Old (Prophetic) and New Testaments (Apostolic) just as we do today. There was the "kiss of peace" and invocation to the Holy Spirit to come over the gifts to change them into the Body and Blood of Jesus. There were the words of consecration as spoken by Jesus at the Last Supper that actually was the moment of consecration of the Eucharist. And the word for "thanksgiving" during the Mass was "Eucharistica". Justine also gave the  "Eucharisted" Jesus to those who also took this Holy Sacrament to the sick as we do today. The priest Justin said this Mass for those who have been baptized and only can be partaken by only those who totally believed in the doctrines of the Catholic Church and baptized into the Faith. Thus it was a "closed" Communion for only the initiated and baptized into Christ. This is the same today. Today on the subject of the Mass, the Catholic Catechism has his letter verbatim to show that the Mass we have today is essentially the same Mass that has been handed down from Jesus to His apostles and to his Church through the ages. Justin also in a letter explained that the Eucharist was to be celebrated on the Lord's Day, Sunday, to keep the Third Commandment to keep Holy The Lord's Day and which was the fulfillment of the keeping of the Jewish Sabbath. Thus the Church even in 150 AD had already transferred the observance of the Sabbath to Sunday because this was the day that the Lord arose from the Dead: thus Sunday is the Lord's Day.

The Mass in not an invention of the Middle Ages, but preceded Constantine by three centuries and in fact was celebrated by St. Paul. In John's Revelation, the parts of the Mass are echoed in the Heavenly Banquet of the Supper of the Lamb. Even Jesus on the way to Emmaus showed himself to two disciples in the "breaking of the bread" with them. "They recognized Him in the breaking of the bread." Jesus' Last Supper goes on through the Centuries and will go on till the end of time.

St. John Damacene in the 8th century also said to those who asked him this question: "How does bread and wine become Jesus, Himself,  in His Body and Blood at Mass?" He answered in these profound words:
"It is only for us to know that the Holy Spirit comes over the bread and wine just as He overshadowed Mary to bring the Body and Blood of Jesus in her womb."  This was so before the doctrine of the Council of Trent that defined the doctrine of Transubstantiation when the the substance of bread and wine become the whole substance of the Body and Blood of Jesus. That is a needed description of how it happens philosophically and theologically to counter the heresies of that day.  But I personally think that St. John Damacene was even more precise in his spirituality that simply the Holy Spirit does it all just as He did at the precise  moment of the Incarnation!

Peace and love,

Pio

Pio's Proverb 128: Lady in Pink Wearing the Coat of Providence: Oct. 5, 2011

Racing to Mass this morning since I overslept, I noticed a car pulled off the road. I stopped to walk back to the car to see if the person needed help. Lo, it was Tracy who lives a few doors from me. She was dressed in a Pink jacket and was smiling from ear to ear and explained that she pulled over to text someone. But she said she was just thinking of me because of her little son Josh whom I urged to her enrolled at Immaculate Conception along with her older son, Brandon, who already enrolled in the 8th grade at I.C.

She said - all smiles - that she was thinking of me because she took Josh to I.C. with her because she wished to go to I.C. to finish some school business for Brandon. Well, when she passed the First Grade class, she noticed all the children and the teacher who immediately came out to greet Tracy and to tell her that there was one seat left in her class - just waiting for Josh! The teacher then said to the class: "Would you like to have Josh in our class!"  All said heartedly: "YES!"  Even Josh - a really good and intelligent boy - was taken aback and said: "Why do they want me in their class?"  Just then, Mrs. Steel, Principal. just happened to come upon the scene and affirmed that there truly was one seat left in the first grade; and that in the second and third grades there was a waiting list!

That was it! Tracy just completed the paper work - then and there - to transfer Josh into the first grade at Immaculate Conception!  I told Tracy a few days ago that if I were Josh's dad, I would not hesitate to enroll him at I.C. I remined Tracy of those words to her a few days ago. She replied, "Well, Josh's Big Daddy wanted him in the class, too!"  For sure, when,  Josh will be 80 years old, he will remember that a whole class of kids wanted him! Talk about acceptance and belonging. Kids want to be accepted in the "in group"; but Josh was accepted into the whole group - all at once.

When you think of all the tiny events that caused Josh to get into I.C.  - that he just happeded to be there at the right place and the right time, that the teacher noticed him and talked to his  mom, that the principal just happened by - all this is not by chance - it is by Providence! God wanted Josh in this school in the worst way. Surely to prepare him for his first Holy Communion next year and to give him the best family of friends his own age. Life has so many surprises! But everyday, The Father in Heaven, shows His greeting to us in the warm, bright sunshine in our faces, the blue sky to show us that He is not only in the Heavens, He IS Heaven, and all the flowers to give us His smiles, and the cuddly clouds to give us His hugs! Amen.

Love, Pio



Just think of all these events in this geto

Pio's proverb 127: Feast of St. Francis of Assisi!

Humble, St. Francis pray for us.  What is so unique about Francis is that he took litterally the Gospel words of Jesus: "See all that you have, give to the poor and come and follow me."  In all the history of the saints, there was no one like St. Francis. He did all that Jesus said to the letter as well as to the heart.

I have like so many of you a statue of St. Francis on my porch railing to see every day to remind me to follow Jesus, love the earth, sun, moon, sky and animals. He even on his death bed from his Canticle of the Sun: "Be praised, Lord, for Sister Death!" He also said Psalm 141; but the essence of St. Francis is his utter poverty: he asked to be laid on the ground naked as he expired so as to be like Jesus who died naken on the cross. His immitation of Christ was so utterly complete that he recieved the wounds of Jesus in his hands, feet and side two years before his death in 1226 at the age of 41.

Here are the words of St. Francis on charity to the poor:

"It is considered a theft on our part if we did not give to someone in greater need than ourself."
                      (That even applied to his giving a leper a hug!)

Jesus gave these two loving messages directly to Francis' heart:

1) "Francis! Everthing you have loved and desired in the flesh it is your duty to despise and hate, if you wish to know my will. And when you have begun this, all that now seems sweet and lovely  to you will become intolearble and bitter; but all that you use to avoid will turn itself to great sweetness and exceeding joy."
(That was true of Francis who gave up the love of Clare so both he and Clare could enter into a complete love relationship with Jesus as their spouse. Hugging the leper, too, became a joy to him eventhough he passed up the leper and then went back to embrace him.)

2) "Francis, go out and build my house, for it is nearly fallen down."
(Of course, Jesus mean not to just rebuild the chapel and churches that had fallen into ruin but to rebuild the whole Church that had falled into ruin as to devotion and zeal for God. Pope Innocent III in a dream saw the begger man, Francis, carrying on his shoulders the whole basiclica of St. John Latern, the Mother church of the Catholic Church at that time.)

Even non-Catholics love St. Francis because his appeal is to all men to see the beauty in nature, to rely on
God and to seek to be poor as to be rich in God.

St. Francis founded three groups of religious orders: The Franciscans - which is the largest order in the world. He also founded the Franciscan Sisters of St. Clare - Poor Clares. He founded the lay order called the Third Order of St. Francis.

In only 41 years on this earth just three years older than another great contempory Franciscan, St. Anthony of Padua, who knew St. Francis as his superior. Of course, St. Francis would not let his friars call the superior that name but call them ministers.  St. Francis has so many Saints in his family. Even today, there are many different orders of St. Francis, all claiming him as their founder and spiritual guide and mentor - litterally, their Patron Saint!

Dear St. Francis, help us to follow Jesus generously as you did and to embrace the crosses of our life with joy so that we can rejoice with you as your extended family, now and forever. Amen.

Love, Pio


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