Here's a story I never thought I'd tell you.

Our suburban conservative Catholic parish does a parish mission during Lent every year.  I read about ours a few weeks ago and it described a Franciscan priest who teaches meditation.

Huh?

I was cautiously optimistic and interested in learning more.  I read about him online; he has a retreat center that teaches meditation to everyone.  Its website calls it something like an interfaith life center.

He was going to preach at our weekend Mass this weekend, then put on four evening seminars.  I was excited.

As you can imagine, there was nowhere to go from there but down.  While I continued to be amazed by the new-agish language coming from this man wearing the traditional Franciscan robe, the basis of his argument turned me off.  His premise was that there is a right path for all of us.  If we can align ourselves with God's will, we can have all of the fullness of life that God wants us to have: health, happiness, etc.

So far so good, I think.

If, however, we do not align ourselves, we will find ourselves unhappy and with illness.

Whaaa???

As you can imagine, I got a little tweaked.  The presumption of that statement was that if I got, say, breast cancer, it was my fault for not living in right alignment.

I was willing to accept that I may be overly-sensitive to this argument and that maybe in a brief sermon he didn't have a chance to fully explain himself.  I didn't go to his first session, but Grace and I went last night.

Again, there were parts that were astounding.  He started out by saying that meditation has traditionally come through organized religion, but that the different religions had different words to say in order to be "right."  The sacred is infinite, he said, and language is finite.  The finite can only describe a portion of the infinite.

I was re-hooked.

He also talked about dreams and visions being marginalized by the Catholic Church into the occult, but that the Bible is filled with people being guided by them.

Goooo onnnn....

He pulled in Jesus saying that the kingdom of heaven is within as a way of proving his point that we all carry the divine inside of us.

He actually talked about our AURAS.

Never, ever did I think I would hear a PRIEST in a CHURCH talk about AURAS.  (as a friend later said to me, geez, what's next, chakras at the fish fry).

Then, there's always a then isn't there?  Then he went too far for me.  He talked about a program in Texas that can cure terminal cancer by changing the subconscious.  He threw out an 85% cure rate and invoked the name of the controversial Bernie Siegel who says happy people don't get sick.

Ok, let me qualify something here.  I have no problem with Siegel's assertions that attitude can affect the outcome.  I believe that I tolerated my 18 months so well because of my own mindset.  I even believe that my life was richer because I was able to avoid the black cloud of self-pity (for the most part).

However, when you make the big leap from quality to quantity I get lost.  There is no evidence that his programs CURE cancer.  In fact, he co-authored a study that showed no difference in longevity between people who participated in his program or didn't.

Fortunately, I'm not much of a hook, line and sinker gal, although I'm starting to think that I just haven't been offered the right bait at the right time yet.  But what bothers me most about this is the opposite of what he said.

If you AREN'T cured, it's either ignorance or a failure of will.  I think that speaks to the age-old American problem of believing we are fully in control of our own destinies.

But dang it, I heard a priest talk about auras in church.  Could the world really be changing?  Goodness knows the Catholics will be bringing up the rear when it comes to the shift.