28 research outputs found
How Can Procurement Create (Sustainable) Public Value Under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Deal?
The economic response of the US government to the COVID-19 pandemic envisions massive investment in infrastructure construction. Yet, governments contract out public works and might lack the capacity to meet the increased demand for new construction. Drawing on a mix of survey and interview data, we identify critical deficiencies in contract capacity that might lead to a loss of public resources and further erode trust in the government. We propose a plan for restructuring public procurement systems and offer solutions around four foci: collaboration, training, flexibility, and sustainability. This transformation path would enhance government contract capacity and use markets to signal a demand for sustainable infrastructure and create public value in line with the strategic objectives of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Deal
Justice in Black and Brown: The impact of political control and representative bureaucracy on street level outcomes
This study tests the explanatory power of two prominent public administration theories—political control and representative bureaucracy—in understanding disparities in public service provision. While prior research focused on street-level bureaucracy, we study here how political and group identities of top elected law enforcement officials affect the distribution of youth arrests, alternatives, and prosecutions among minority groups. Data from Florida's 67 counties between 2015 and 2020 demonstrate that sheriff's and state attorney's party affiliation, race, and ethnicity do affect street-level outcomes. However, the effects are more pronounced for race than ideology. Also, representative bureaucracy appears more relevant for race than ethnicity and explains the behavior of Black sheriffs but not Black state attorneys
Skapular-Propeller-Lappen zur Verbesserung von Funktion und Ästhetik nach großflächiger Tumorexzision an der Schulter
Pilon digitale Fraktur - neues Therapiekonzept der minimal-invasiven Reposition und Stabilisierung
Perkutane Verschraubung von nicht und minimal-dislozierten Scaphoidfrakturen - Erfahrung aus über 100 Fällen
A Combination Scheme of Artificial Intelligence and Fuzzy Pattern Recognition in Medical Diagnosis
. The statement advocated here is that a trainable scheme resembling some elements of physician's decision making process could lead to an increased classification accuracy. Problems are considered which are difficult to cope with from both pattern recognition and AI point of view. A combination scheme is proposed which consists of an AI preprocessing part and a pattern recognition part delivering the final decision. The idea is to detect and then to aggregate the strengths of positive and negative evidence for a given medical hypothesis through a trainable nonlinear function. A possibility for application to CADIAG-2 is considered. An example from aviation medicine is presented which demonstrates the classification accuracy of 76.6 % of the proposed scheme versus 64.1 % obtained with linear discriminant analysis. 1 Introduction Although pattern recognition and artificial intelligence (AI) branches have usually been confronted and have developed in isolation from each other, the recen..
Perkutane Verschraubung von Scaphoidfrakturen: Subjektives und objektives Outcome nach durchschnittlich 41 Monaten
Perkutane Verschraubung von Scaphoidfrakturen: Subjektives und objektives Outcome nach durchschnittlich 41 Monaten
Issue 46.2 of the Review for Religious, March/April 1987.Modern Media and Comn~unity
Vocation Directors and Sexuality
Trends in Spirituality--1986
An Experience of Group Direction
Volume 46
Number 2
March/April, 1987
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Editor
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Assistant Editor
March/April, 1987
Volume 46
Number 2
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The Fi st Stage tO"Union:
The Active Night Of the .Senses
Susan A. Muto
Doctor Muto is Director of Duquesne’s Institute of Formative Spirituality (Duquesne
University; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15282).
St. John of the Cross’ teaching in the first book of the Ascent of Mount
Carmel presupposes that the sojourner has reached that stage in the spiritual
life where he or she Js ready to advance beyond the beginnings of prayer
and awaken to the deeper regions of divine intimacy. Thus he writes here
for (advanced) beginners and persons already proficient in such virtues as
detachment, humility and charity.
The aim of Book One is threefold: to help an already well,formed self,
one who has tasted certain pleasures and satisfactions, to unburden itself
of worldly, inordinate attachments; to share the knowledge the saint has
gathered through his own reading, experience, and direction as to how souls
are to avoid spiritual obstacles; and to describe in concrete detail the way
in which one can live in the freedom of spirit necessary, for divine union.
It is wise at this point to read the poem, "One Dark Night," and return
to it, for its moving images teach--more than abstract concepts can--how
happy the soul is to pass through the nights of sense and spirit to union
with its Beloved.
In the Prologue to Book One the master says that his guides on this
journey will be, above all, the desire for God, along with the background
wisdom provided by Sacred Scripture and the doctrine of the Church. He
immediately identifies two main obstacles to advancement, these being, in
a phrase, inadequate direction and inadequate appraisal. Spiritual directors,
161
Review for Religious, March-April, 1987
lacking both sufficient knowledge and experience.of what is happening to
the pilgrim soul may unwittingly encourage persons to continue in their old
ways. Then, too, the person himself or herself may neither know how to
nor want to advance. Even if the Lord comes, they are not willing to adapt
themselves to his work. They resist the flow of grace or refuse to cooperate.
Thus:
God gives many souls the talent and grace for advancing, and should they
desire to make the effort they would arrive at this high state. And so it
is sad to see them continue in their lowly method of communion with God
because they do not want or know how to advance, or because they receive
no direction on breaking away from the methods of beginners (AMC, I,
Prologue, 3/70).*
Failing to understand that God is the author of this enlightenment, ill-prepared
directors may urge persons, instead of advancing, to return to
former ways of prayer or to make many general confessions. They do not
realize that now is not the time for such activity:
Indeed it is a period for leaving these persons alone in the pu~’gation God
is working in them, a time to give comfort and encouragement that they
may desire to endure this suffering as long as God wills, for until then,
no remedy--whatever the soul does, or the confessor says--is adequate
(AMC, I, Prologue, 5/71).
Having said this, St. John begins in Chapters One and Two to explain
the imagery of’the "night" that will guide both him and the soul. Early
evening or twilight marks the point of departure, the time of purgation,
for the soul will experience deprivations of its appetites for worldly pleasure,
possessiohs; powers. As one mortifies these, one is led deeper into the
night--to the midnight hour of dense darkness where the only means of
progress is faith, where intellect is deprived of its normal modes of knowing
so that one may be made ready for the secret and intimate self-communications
of God. The night eventually gives way to daybreak, to
the dawn, which symbolizes the point of God’s arrival, the time of love’s
illumination transformed into perfect union with the Lover: Thus these phases
of the night encompass the threefold path of purgation, illumination, and
union, not as something accomplished once and for all in linear fashion,
but as an ongoing cycle of deprivation, restoration, and transformation.
One discovers through the nights of sense and spirit that, as St. Teresa of
Avila says, on this walk through life God alone suffices. No object of sense,
no concept, image, or idea, can fulfill our infinite desire.
The point of Chapter Three is to identify the first cause of this night
as the "privation"~or deprivation of perverted desires or appetites. Perhaps
The First Stage to Union
this is St. John’s way of explaining, as a necessary condition for.spiritual
deepening, control of the pleasure principle. This control actually effects
a rechanneling of vital energies so that they flow from and return to their
transcendent source. We must go through this "night" in order to restore
the equilibrium thrown off by excessive attachment to the gratifications
afforded by our relations, sensually speaking, to persons, things and events.
It is clear from the context of this chapter that St. John believes that
all creation is good; nothing is evil in itself. Ideally we ought to proceed
from the manifestations of God to God himself. In reality, due to the spiritual
blindness imposed by our fallen condition, we cling frantically to these vital
gratifications. By refusing to let them go, we disavow them. as pointers to
their Creator. We tend to make them ultimate sources of pleasure or posses-sion.
They become idols or ends in themselves. The result of not entering
the night of sense deprivation is, therefore, an increase of formation igno-rance
or forgetfulness of our true transcendent" nature--the dynamic that
marks our most distinctive human quality. Hence, we need the "night" to
reawaken our capacity to remember the Creator in our sense perception of
creatures. That is to say, we must see through the visible to the invisible
Reality. We are not to remain only on the surface of things but to behold
in faith the depth dimension. By darkening the senses of hearing, seeing,
smelling, tasting and touching, one is paradoxically free and empty of all
things, even though one possesses them. In short: "Since the things of the
world cannot enter the soul, they are not in themselves an encumbrance
or harm to it; rather, it is the will and appetite dwelling within it that causes
the damage" (AMC, 1, 3, 5/77).
St. John now goes on, in effect, in Chapters Four and Five to suggest
three steps to follow on this phase of the journey through the dark night
to God. They are, in a word, remembrance, comparison and renunciation..,
In the first place, to be freed from this idle/idol illusion, one must strive
to remember the right relation between creation and the Creator. Curiously
enough, this re-membering has to do with dismembering, that is, of divesting
ourselves of inordinate attachments to things as they are in themselves, as
if they could be separated f~om their Creator. To dismember a thing as
ultimate is to re-member it as dependent on God..Such detachment, while
painful, helps one to appreciate things much more as manifestations of the
goodness of God. By contrast, one who is clothed in these affections (versus
dis-membered) will be "incapable of the enlightenment and dominating full-ness
of God’s pure and simple light, unless he rejects them" (AMC, I, 4,
1/77-78). Harsh as it may sound, St. John holds firm to his conviction that
the light of divine union cannot be established in the soul until these (inordi-nate)
affections are eradicated. A more positive way of making the point
164 / Review for Religious, March-April, 1987
might be to ~ay t~at when our idolizing ~lesire to take pleasure in and to
possess things as such is mortified, we can appreciate them as they are in
their pristine origin and beauty. We move in this way from a posture of
violence and control to one of love and letting be, from an attitude of
manipulation and calculation to one of compassion.
A second helpful step at this stage of the journey is to set up a comparison
between the finite, limited nature of things as distinct from the "how much
more" of the infinite. For example, the Sea of Galilee compared to the sea
of God’s love is like a drop of water compared to the Pacific Ocean. Simi-larly,
creatures, however beautiful, elegant and abundant they may be, com-pared
to their Creator are as darkness compared to light, are as coarseness
compared to grace, or ignorance compared to ability. Through this exercise
in comparison, St. John introduces us to the Reality Principle, namely, he
wants us to see things as they really are in their limited value and as pointers
to the limitlessness of thei’r Lord. Via this comparison, we will be better
able to break the tendency to make any "little beyond" into the "True
Be~,ond"’ and hence _to. r_is_k !nitiating a pseud.o-spirituality that invests in
something finit~ the richness of the Infinite. Understanding this point of
comparison enables us to read Chapter Four as a litany of praise to our
Creator God:
ÂŻ . . all the being of creatures compared with the infinite being of God is
nothing .... All the beauty of creatures compared with the infinite Beauty
of God is supreme ugliness .... All the grace and elegance of creatures
compared with God’s grace is utter coarseness and crudity... (AMC, l,
4, 4/79).
Here St. John would agree fully with St. Paul that the wisdom of the
world is mere foolishness in God’s sight (1 Co 3:19). Clearly, the meaning
of these statements does not intend for us to reject creaturely being, beauty,
grace and ability as bad, but to place these attributes in their proper rela-tion
to God. They will all pass away, but not his word. Creaturely qualities,
no matter how rich, are ultimately poor in comparison to the Being, Beauty,
Elegance and Wisdom of God. Our hope resides not in this or that momen-tary
pleasure or possession but in God alone. If the first step out of illusion
is to remember our nothingness without God, then the second step is to
compare his eternal truth with whatever is temporal. The promise he makes
to us is more trustworthy than any stopping place on the path of formation.
Thus it is up to us to keep running the race to the end, which means not
resting ultimately in anything but God, for, as St. Augustine has said so
beautifully, our hearts are restless until they rest in him. Or, to again quote
St. John:
The First Stage to Union
All the sovereignty and freedom of the world compared with the f~eedom
and sovereignty of the Spirit of God is utter slavery, anguish, and cap-tivit3;
.... All the delights and satisfactions of the will in the things of
the world in contrast to all the delight that is God is intense suffering, tor-ment
and bitterness .... All the wealth and, glory of creation compared
with the wealth that is God is utter poverty and misery in the Lord’s sight
(AMC, I, 4, 6, 7/80).
The third step, as suggested in Chapter Five, is the most radical, for
St. John says that total renunciation is the condition par excellence for pure
transformation. Here paradox prevails, Just as knowing is only possible
in unknowing, so freedom of spirit or liberation is the result of detachment
or renunciation. One must empty the appetite of all the natural and super-natural
things which can be a hindrance to the journey to God. This kenotic
experience does not happen once and for all but demands habitual effort
in cooperation with the graces God is bestowing. The language here allows
for no compromise: ,
The road and ascent to God, then, necessarily, demands a habitualeffort
to renounce ~nd mortify the appetites; the sooner this mortification is
achieved~ the sooner the soul re~ches the top. But until the appetiteff are
eliminated, a person will not arrive, no matter how much virtue he practices.
For he will fail to acquire perfect virtue, which lies in keeping the soul empty,
naked and purified of every appetite (AMC, I, 5, 6/83).
If we desire to climb the summit of the mount "in order to become an
altar for the offering of a sacrifice of pure love and praise," we must strive
to accomplish three.tasks, described through the following metaphors: first,
we must "cast out strange gods," meaning that we have to let go of any
affections and attachments that tend to alienate us from God; secondly,
we must purify ourselves of their residue through habitual denial (saying
no for the sake of a greater yes) and--for as often as we fail to do so--
through habitual, confident repentance (trusting that God’s mercy responds
with motherly tenderness to our misery); and, thirdly, we must take on a
"change of garments," meaning that we must be clothed in a "new under-standing
of God [through the removal of the understanding of the old man],
and in a new love of God in God .... " In this way, we move from igno-rance
of who we really are toward acceptance of our being made in the
form and likeness of God, of our being, as St. John puts it, "his worthy
dwelling." The saint is one who says with every fiber of his or her being:
"My God and my all!" One accepts this truth without flinching: "The only
appetite God permits and wants in his dwelling place is the desire for the
perfect fulfillment of his law and the carrying of his cross" (AMC, I, 5, 8/84).
Having reflected on the meaning and demands of total renunciation and
"166 / Review for Religious, March-April, 1987
the liberation it brings, St. John moves on in the next five chapters (Six
through Ten) to analyze the harms the appetites engender in the soul. There
are two main areas of harm, the one privative, the other positive. In general,
unruly appetites deprive us of God’s spirit. By our attachment to a created
thing weoare less capable of soaring free to God. St. John relies for his reason-ing
on the philosophical fact that two contraries cannot coexist in the same
person. Therefore, "Since love of God and attachment to creatures are con-traries,
they cannot coexist in the same will" (AMC, I, 6, 2/85). In biblical
terms, rather than accept our privilege as children of God to eat at his table,
we act like dogs who must eat the crumbs that fall to the floor. We refuse
to rise from the "crumbs" of creatures to the uncreated Spirit of the Father.
It stands to reason that "this uncreated fullness cannot find entry to a soul
until this other hunger caused by the desires is expelled" (AMC, I, 6, 3/85).
As to the second harm, which is positive, we must realize that numerous.
impediments are wrought in the soul by inordinate appetites, the most
obvious of these being that they weary, torment, darken, defile and weaken
the true seeker. Our spiritual life suffers in the first place because these appe-tites
weary and tire us to death. He compares them to restless, discontented
children, who wear their mothers out trying to please them. Satisfied at one
moment, they demand more satisfaction the next. The more one quiets their
cravings, the more demanding they become. One feels increasingly agitated,
disturbed, fatigued. Like the pulsion governing physical hunger or sexual
need, so appetites in general are stirred to satisfy themselves endlessly. St.
John makes this analogy:
Just as a lover is wearied and depressed when on a longed-for day his oppor-tunity
is frustrated, so is a man wearied and tired by all his appetites and
their fulfillment, because the fulfillment only causes more hunger and empti-ness.
An appetite, as they say, is like a fire that blazes up when wood is
thrown on it, but necessarily dies out when the wood is consumed (AMC,
I, 6, 6/87).
Such desires make it impossible for us to live in the longing for God
alone, for instead of him, weexpect them to satisfy us. It is as if we keep
looking for heaven on earth. Thus we become ready victims of illusory
promises of fulfillment. We give in to the pressures of consumerism. In both
cases the sad reward is discontent, for we have turned unwittingly from God
who alone can satisfy us.
These inordinate appetites not only wear us-out, they also torment us.
They gnaw at us mercilessly, as if we were bound by tight cords or tortured
on a rack. The torment would be comparable to that which a person suffers
who lies naked on thorns and nails; who is in pain; who knows no peace;
who is always thirsty. In contrast to what happens to us when the cord of
The First Stage to Union / 167
desires tightens around us, when the possessions we cling to desperately
possess us, think of the liberation of the children of God. Consider the
refreshing peace that is ours when we surrender our will to his. Instead of
wasting our efforts, why don’t we delight in the abundance of God? We
should learn to see that
this movement to~vard abundance is a departure from the pleasures of crea-tures,
because the creature torments, while the Spirit of God refreshes’.’
-Accordingly, God calls us through St. Matthew... as though he were to
say: All you going about tormented, afflicted, and weighed down by your
cares and appetites, depart from them, come to me and I will refresh you;
and you will find the rest for your souls that the desires take away from
you (Mt 11:28-29) (AMC, 1, 7, 4/88-89).
Thirdly, these self-centered desires blind us. It is as if we are living behind
a cloudy pane of glass that blocks out the bright sunshine. We see only a
hazy image of things--not things as they really are. Due to this blindness,
it is impossible for us to think clearly. It is as if the powers of our transcen-dent
mind are dulled by the excessive demands of the vital or functional
spheres. Both natural reason and supernatural wisdom are darkened. And
when the intellect is obscured, the will becomes weak and the memory dis-ordered.
The desire for const’an~ pleasure or sensual stimulation makes reflec-tive
living a virtual impossibility. Things go from bad to worse because the
intellect is incapable of receiving the illumination of God’s wisdom; ttie will
cannot embrace the pure love of God; and the memory lessens its capacity
for the impression of the serenity of God’s image upon it.
Unless these blinding desires are mortified, one will not advance on the
way of union. It stands to reason that if the~e unruly appetites lead a person,
he or sh~ is bound to be blind to the’mind’s appraisal powers. One reacts
on impulse, without the help of a quiet attunement to the Christ form in
the core of one’s being. All that is released is the counterfeit form of con-cupiscence
and pride. No amount of penance can overcome this darkness
if one does not root out the source of the trouble, namelyl the blinding
blockage of inordinate desires. They are like a ~ataract on the eye or specks
of dust in°it. Until they are removed, they obstruct vision. One way or
another, in this life or in the next, these appetites have to be chastised and
corrected. They have to underg6 purgation before any steady progress in
the spiritual life can take place. St. John laments this condition of forma-tion
ignorance in language reminiscent of the prophets:
Oh, if men but knew what a treasure of divine light this blindness caused
by their affections and appetites deprives them of, and the number of mis-fortunes
and evils these appetites occasion each day when left unmorti-fle!!
.... At every step we mistake evil for good and good for evil.
16~i / Review for Religious., March-April, 1987
This is peculiar to our nature. But what will happen if appetite is added
to our natural darkness? .... We have felt our way along the way as
though blind, we have groped as if without eye,s, and our blindness has
reached the point that we stumble along in broad daylight as though walk-ing
in the dark (AMC, I, 8, 6, 7/91).
Using even stronger language, St. John assures us that such blind desires
stain ,and defile the soul, bringing it into bondage under the rule of the
autarchic-pride form, and blackening the beauty of the christ form we are
called to r