DAY ONE

Hello my friends. Welcome to the first of the twelve days.

When I was a child I dreamed incredible dreams and I had incredible fears. Sometimes my fears mixed with my dreams. Maybe you know what I mean. Maybe you don’t. Maybe you’re still having those fretful dreams. Wherever you are and whatever you’re experiencing, I love you…and that has nothing to do with how you feel about me.

But back then I didn’t love you. I feared you…but not just you…I feared life. I feared death. I feared myself. So I said and did many things to protect myself from the fear. Maybe you did too.

How did you cope with childhood? How did you cope with friendships, school, relationships, family, growing up, becoming you? Do you remember? Do the memories hurt? Do you have shame mixed with joy? Happiness mixed with disappointment? What went right? What didn’t?

I was born in 1957, the beloved son of two wonderfully young foolish people trying on the garment of parenthood. In 1977 I died…but my body lived on. And those two wonderful parents of mine, as oblivious to me as I was to them, never knew I had passed on.

In 1978 I was born again. If you know what that means then I don’t need to say any more to you. If you don’t know what that means, then you’ll just have to find out. Stick around…who knows what might happen. Then there’s a few of you who think you know what it means but you don’t and because you think you do, you’ll never know what it really means and that’s sad…for you.

Death is an interesting phenomenon. I’m sure I don’t understand it. I hate it and I’m fascinated by it. And I hate it. And I’m drawn to it daily. But living death was much worse.

If you’ve ever done time on this earth as a shade, a wraith walking in the crack between the world that is and the world that isn’t then you know what happened to me. If you’re still living there…I don’t know what to tell you except there are two ways out and they’re both final…but they’re not both equal.

How many of our friends, our families, our brothers, sisters, cousins, neighbors, school chums and children (dear God we’re all just children) have moved beyond our reach forever? You may think you’re too far gone but if you’re a living dog then you’re much better than a dead lion. Think about it.

I like... no that’s not true...I LOVE the scene in The Matrix where Morpheus offers Neo the Red pill. Have you seen the movie? Did you like it? Did you hate it? Have you asked yourself why?

If you haven’t seen it, the hero is a seeker named Neo who is looking to find out what’s really going on in his world and what is this thing that he knows only as The Matrix. Morpheus, a person claiming to know what The Matrix really is, offers Neo two pills: one red and one blue.

The red pill is an opportunity to see ‘beyond the world that has been pulled over our eyes to blind us from the truth’ and as Morpheus says “to see how deep the rabbit hole really goes”. The blue pill is the fall back position: If Neo chooses the blue pill, he can go back to sleep and forget that any of this had ever happened.

How many times have you (and I) taken the blue pill and gone back to sleep pretending all this never happened?

I’ll see you tomorrow…or I won’t…

@ 2010 Joseph Ricciardi Jr

The world that has been pulled over your eyes

I love the scene in “The Matrix” where Morpheus makes the offer to Neo (the Red pill) to find out what the Matrix really is all about. If you haven’t seen the movie, that scene alone is worth the effort. Morpheus calls the matrix:

… the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.

Of course, once Neo becomes “enlightened” to the truth his life actually becomes more difficult and bleak. Those of us who follow the Lord Jesus Christ and have accepted his offer of life in the age to come, are acutely aware of how true to experience this can be.

One of the other characters in the movie, Cypher, regrets his decision to take the red pill and find out “how deep the rabbit-hole goes”. He would rather be a slave, asleep and oblivious to the reality of what’s going on, feeding on “virtual” steak and accepting the blinders. In order to regain the womb to tomb comfort of the Matrix, he sells out his compatriots to the enemy. His spoken philosophy: “Ignorance is bliss.”

Gosh I’m so much like Cypher and like Neo. I want to be the one who takes the red pill, faces reality and lives out of my true heart come what may. But then I’m a well seasoned American child of affluence who enjoys worldly comforts. “Oh wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” (Rom 7:24) Like Cypher, I like my creature comforts.

So although we’re not just batteries for a race of evil machines, like the horrible future portrayed in “The Matrix”, there is an evil that would like to ruin our lives in a fruitless pursuit of things that are not worthy of our attention. In fact, the world in which we live, is, in many ways orchestrated to appeal to our basest emotions and intentions and thus shipwreck our faith and reliance on God and divine providence. I agree with the Apostle John in his first epistle to the Church where he writes:

Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passes away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abides for ever. (1John 2:15-17)

Don’t let them pull the world over your eyes! Love God and eschew evil. Jesus Christ is coming again.

@ 2007 Joseph Ricciardi Jr