MOUNTAINS AND MOLEHILLS

INTRODUCTION

The title of my homily is, “Mountains and Molehills.”

We’ve all heard the old saying, “Don’t make mountains out of molehills.”

SNOW OR SNOWSTORM?

With yesterday’s snow, a decision had to be made last evening about St. Mary’s Sunday morning Religious Ed classes – as well as the 8 AM Children’s Mass – as well as the Adult Religious Ed Discussion Program for after the 8 AM Children’s Mass.

Yesterday morning and afternoon I was helping with First Reconciliation, First Confession, for tiny kids and their parents and grandparents at Our Lady of the Fields Parish in Millersville.

It was raining on my way over there at 10 AM – and then it started to snow.

Coming back yesterday afternoon around 2:45, I was wondering if the play in our St. Mary’s High School for last night would be cancelled. I was glad I saw it on Friday night.

With the snow continuing, I was wondering about tomorrow, Sunday.

After a half hour nap and confessions here, and after two hot dogs for supper, I went to work on 3 things for this morning. I had to write a homily for the 8 AM Children’s Mass. Then I was going to put together a reflection for the Sunday morning Religious Education Adult Discussion program. The theme was to be on Advent. Then I would start my homily for the 12:30 Mass for today.

I was working on my Children’s Mass homily – a story – when I got a phone call telling me the Kids’ Mass, as well as Sunday morning Religious Education Classes, as well as the Advent Adult Ed Discussion program, were being cancelled – after checking this out with the pastor. Mr. Steve Beard, who is charge of all these Religious Ed programs, then said with a smile in his voice, “I know you people from up north – are used to lots of snow.”

Steve Beard, didn’t say, “I am not trying to make a mountain out of a molehill.”

Yet, a decision had to be made the night before – for here at St. Mary’s and I’m sure a million more programs, plays, parties, games, etc. in the path and reality of the snow or snow storm. And from experience, people in charge know decisions have to be made. And people in charge know that every decision has consequences. People will show up and discover closed doors. Some people will then say, “Okay, I understand!” Others will scream – in frustration – about failure of communication around here – not knowing there was a phone tree and the change was made on our web site, and announced on the radio, etc.

I remember hearing about a guy going bankrupt because of a bunch of lawsuits – when one of his school buses crashed and killed some kids in a snowstorm – when school was not called off.

Life calls for lots of decisions.

Life has its sunny mornings like today – as well as its swirling and sticking snow like yesterday. And Mr. Steve Beard told me last night that the temperature report for tomorrow morning is 28 degrees.

Decisions, decisions, decisions.

There are mountains and there are molehills – ups and downs, twists and turns, this and that’s in life.

In the meanwhile, my mountain became a molehill – because all I had to put together for today was a homily for the 12:30 Sunday Mass.

TODAY’S READINGS

Once more the Sunday Readings have food for thought.

Today’s first reading and today’s gospel both talk about leveling mountains – and using the rocks and mountain earth to fill in the valleys and make everything smooth and level.

Green theologians certainly would make comments about that – as well as poets like Wendell Berry. He was on the Diane Rehm show last Monday, November 30th, voicing a protest about strip coal mining in his native Kentucky – ruining the view, destroying the trees, and causing massive ecological ruin. The process used is the removal of whole tops of mountains – to get to the coal. Of course it’s jobs and less dependence on foreign oil – but it’s also mess and scream.

Everything has consequences. Decisions. Decisions. Decisions.

Today’s Gospel talks not only about leveling mountains and filling valley’s, but also about making winding roads straight – and rough ways smooth.

Does anyone complain about Route 97? Does everyone who falls or almost falls, complain about certain sections of bumpy red bricks on the sidewalks of Annapolis? Does everyone love the Shenandoah Valley as well as the Blue Ridge mountains? How many people stop when driving – when they see the sign, “Scenic Overview”?

If I go back to the street I grew up on, to the house we lived in, 326-62nd Street, Brooklyn, N.Y. it is no longer there. It was removed to make way for a wider and faster Gowanus Parkway. Does anyone who grew up where Route 97 now rolls – miss their childhood home or farm or what have you?

LIFE’S READINGS

William James, the 19th and early 20th century philosopher said in a 1907 lecture on Pragmatism, “The philosophy which is so important in each of us is not a technical matter; it is our more or less dumb sense of what life honestly and deeply means. It is only partly got from books; it is our individual way of just seeing and feeling the total push and pressure of the cosmos.” [Pragmatism, Lecture I, 1907]

We learn from books, from church, from lectures, from conversations, from adult ed, but William James is saying the key thing is common sense and dumb sense – the what we have picked up from the pull and pressure of what surrounds us.

What’s in your wallet? What’s in your pressure cooker? What’s does your education look like in degreeless common or dumb sense? What have you picked about life so far?

What impact do mountains have on a valley?

What effect do they have on the weather patterns and the psyche patterns of the people?

Would a person be different growing up in the shadow of a mountain – looking out the window each morning – and seeing that mountain –– than if they grew up on the plains.

Would we be different if our dad was 6 foot 5 or 5 foot 6 – if he was a piece of cake or a bottle of spicy sauce sprinkled on everything we did growing up? What impact do we have on each other?

THERE ARE MANY, BUT HERE’S ONE PERCEPTION I PICKED UP SO FAR

One of my regular homily hopes and questions is to ask people to reflect on something I’m pushing in my homily and then do some homework on that during the week to come. You heard me. What do you hear from yourself ? And to do this as a couple and/or family.

And I try to do this in 10 minutes – 5 pages typed – 14 pica. But I realize that time itself is relative. That’s why I love the saying, “How long a minute takes depends on which side of the bathroom door you’re on.” How long a 10 minute homily takes, depends on which side of the pulpit you’re on.

Okay here’s one of my perceptions and it’s about perception. Come up with one perception that you have come up with – something that makes common or dumb or smart sense to you.

Here it is: Perception is reality, till we sometimes discover our perception is not reality.

I’m preaching a parish mission somewhere in New Jersey. I’m dressed as a priest. It’s Saturday afternoon – I’m trying to find this church. I’m lost. I pull into a gas station just across from a water tower. I ask this young gas station attendant if he knows where St’s Peter and Paul Church is. He stays quiet for a moment. Then he says, “It looks like you came down this street, so go out of the station, make a left turn and go up this street for 5 lights till you hit a big main road. Make a left turn there and then go 1 light. Make a left turn there and go down 3 lights and the church will be on your left.

I say okay.

Using my hand I go the 5 lights till I hit the big main road. I go one light and make a left and go down 3 lights and sure enough there it is. However, as I’m getting out of my car I see the water tower just to my left. I say to myself, “The son of a gun. He could have told me to go out of the gas station – go to the corner - and then make a right and go a few blocks there is the church. Ugh.

Sunday afternoon I go to take a walk and I’m heading for the tower and the gas station on foot. Surprise I come to a canal that can’t be crossed – and I realize then and there I had to go the way the gas station guy sent me.

We’re driving to Colorado – 4 priests – from the Bronx – to go back packing in the Rockies. We hit Colorado in 32 hours – straight driving – switching drivers every 2 hours. We’re now in Colorado driving west and we see the mountains ahead of us. It’s getting really dark – and we won’t be able to get into Estes Park – in the Rockies till morning, so we decide to pull onto a dirt road and we climb over a barbwire fence – set up our two tents and sleep for the night.

We wake up in the morning. It’s all bright outside – but we’re surrounded by two dozen or so steer’s grazing. We get out of our tent – trying to avoid steer drops – and surprise, there are no mountains. We still have miles and miles to go. What we saw the night before were clouds that looked like mountains.

CONCLUSION

Perception is reality, till we discover our perception is not reality.

Sometimes mountains are mountains and sometimes mountains are just clouds that disappear in the morning.

Sometimes molehills are mountains and sometimes mountains are molehills.

Sometimes lumps are cancerous – sometimes they are just lumps.