HAVING THE GRACE
TO LIFT UP YOUR FACE

Quote for the Day - May 15, 2010


"The time
cracks into furious flower. Lifts its face
all unashamed. And sways in wicked grace."

Gwendolyn Brooks [1917- ] In The Mecca [1968], The Second Sermon on the Warplane, stanza 4

OBLITERATED

Quote for the Day - May 14, 2010

"Beware of allowing a tactless word, a rebuttal, a rejection to obliterate the whole sky."

Anais Nin [1903-1977], The Diary of Anais Nin, volume III, January 1944

EITHER OFF OR ON?

Quote for the Day - May 13,  2010


"There are going to be times when we can't wait for somebody. Now, you're either on the bus or off the bus. If you're on the bus, and you get left behind, then you'll find it again. If you're off the bus in the first place - then it won't make a damn."


Ken Kesey [September 17, 1935 --- November 10, 2001], Quoted by Tom Wolfe in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test [1968], chapter 6


Painting on top: "The Green Car" by the American artist Wiliam Glackens [1870-1938], Oil on canvas, 1910.

BETTER KNOW BASEBALL

Quote for the Day  May 12, 2010

"Whoever wants to know the heart of America had better learn baseball, the rules and realities of the game - and do it by watching first some high school or small-town teams."

Jacques Barzun [1907- ] God's Country and Mine [1954]

NEEDS

Quote for the Day - May 11, 2010


"From birth to eighteen, a girl needs good parents. From eighteen to thirty-five, she needs good looks. From thirty-five to fifty-five, she needs a good personality. From fifty-five on, she needs good cash."


Sophie Tucker [c. 1884-1966] Said at sixty-nine. She is also said to have said, "I have been poor and I have been rich. Rich is better."

Didn't Woody Allen say basically the same thing?

RESURRECTION

Quote for the Day - May 10, 2010

"Spring bursts today, for Christ is risen and all the earth's at play."

Christina Georgina Rossetti

SHE WAS GREAT

[Yesterday at lunch – 4 or 5 of us were sitting there – and someone said, “I don’t see any connection between tomorrow’s readings and Mother’s Day.” Someone else said, “You’re right. You have to preach on one or the other.” Someone else said, “You better say something about Mother’s Day or else?” Afterwards I was thinking to myself, “Maybe write a story – about a mother!” Then it hit me to just sit down at the computer and start imagining. So that’s what I did and that’s how I came up with this reflection. I don’t know what this actually is – other than a sort of poetic reflection about the gift and mystery of life. From past experience, some of you who don’t get poetry, won’t get this – but as my mom always used to say, “You did your best” So once more the title of my reflection is, “She Was Great.”]

I never met her – obviously – because this is the 21st century and she lived in the 13th century. I never knew her – obviously – because our family can only trace back its roots till the 1830’s or 1840’s – to a man named Edward the Carpenter. I have no clue to what this woman back in the 13th century looked like – sounded like – whether she had a long life or a short life – but obviously I do know she existed, and she had at least one child, because I exist.

I exist, therefore I know she existed.

Now that’s one of life’s most simple syllogisms – one of life’s great truths. Cause and effect! Sex and consequence: a baby.

Life! Praise God.

I always love to quote Groucho Marx’s words, “If your parents didn’t have any children, chances are, you won’t either.”

Existence – being alive – being here and now – like every blade of grass – like every flower in Mary’s Garden on the other side of these stained glass windows and plaster and red brick wall – exist – flower, flourish, grow – because of a cause greater than itself – a gardener, a planter, a pruner, a planner, water, sun, seed, fertilizer, earth, oxygen, birds and bees, the second collection …. and God the Creator of all this that surrounds us – all this that is around us.

So pinch yourself if you have a pulse, while you’re sitting here today – and thank your mother and grandmother – and all those in your line for the gift of life.

I am here – but I’m aware that I wouldn’t be here except for others – mother – father – grandmothers, grandfathers – love – God.

So too you. So too my great, great, great, great great – I don’t know how to calculate and label what number of great it is, for that woman, that mother, sometime back in the 13th century ….

I pinch myself because of her.

Without her I wouldn’t be here today.

I could do this same reflection on some other woman in my chain of mothers – who became a mother back in the 9th century – or 4th century – but this morning I’m thinking about this unknown woman in the 13th century – whoever she was.

Who was her husband? Did she have any other children? Did she love to dance like my mother? Did she have a smile and a love for walking like my father? Did she come from the same area of Ireland that my mother came from or did she migrate from somewhere else? I don’t know.

God, there is so much I don’t know – but I do know that one thing about her – this nameless woman – that she gave birth to a child, who gave birth to a child, who gave birth to a child, who gave birth to a child, who gave birth to a child, all the way down to me.

I think of these things when I see college kids on television who set up rows and rows and rows of dominoes – and then they knock over that first domino that hits another domino and we then see the so called “domino effect”. I think of these things when I see a pregnant woman. I think of these things when I see a grandmother at a baptism of her new born grandchild. I think of these things on Mother’s Day.

A lot of love and a lot of luck – a lot of mystery and a lot of happenchance – had to happen to get me and each of us into the specific skin we live in and the church and bench we are sitting in today – to get us to this moment of our life.

Thank you God. Thank you mysterious woman.

And I wonder: did she think about her grandmother – and back as far as she could think and how her story got to where her story got to in the 13th century? Did she think ahead to those who would come after her?

Life – a chain – like the beads on a rosary – with lots of mysteries – broken at times – but when repaired, it can continue and continue and continue and continue – even without batteries – just with life.

I think about this on Mother’s Day – and a pinch of sadness slips into my musings – that I became a priest – and my line – in a way stops with me – just like my sister Peggy who is a nun. Neither of us have children obviously.

But I am grateful – very grateful for my other sister having 4 children – two boys and two girls – and those two girls have 4 sons and a daughter – and my brother’s wife gave birth to 7 daughters and so my 9 nieces got me to know husbands and lots of grandnieces and grandnephews who will keep our line going – hopefully to the 23rd century and on and on and on.

Will someone on Mother’s Day in 3010 wonder about where they came from and how they got to that moment – and be grateful for people way back in the 20th and 21st centuries – and before that?

Life – “Ah sweet mystery of life….” – as the old song goes.

Pinch yourself if you’re a mom or a dad – and you brought new life into this world.

Read Shakespeare’s Second Sonnet every once and a while – that is, if you are a mother or a father – because it’s a powerful poetic reflection – much more literary than this poetic reflection – on one of life’s most amazing realities: being a mother or a father.

The poet – is standing there at the age of forty and he’s feeling older – at 40 – well it was way back when – when people died younger – and he says, “When forty winters besiege your brow – when you look in the mirror and see all those wrinkles in your face– when there are deep trenches in thy beauty’s field – when your youth and its pride is tattered and falling apart – when your eyes are sunken – when your lusty days are less – when you look at your life and have to make a shameful confession of greed and self-obsession – that you could have done better with your talents and your life – when at that moment you ask, “what have I done? – what stands for me?” – see your child and say:

“This fair child of mine
Shall sum my count
and make my old excuse,'
Proving his beauty by succession thine!
This were to be new made when thou art old,
And see thy blood warm when thou feel'st it cold.”

Wonderful!

Hopefully those with children are thankful for their children.

Hopefully those who have children have wonderful children.

Yet I wonder: no wonder parents of older kids hope parents of younger kids really enjoy their kids when they are small – and so innocent – before they disappoint or break hearts. Is this why grandparents love to be with their little grand kids?

And what about those of us without kids?

I rationalize and realize that every act of kindness can be mother to another act of kindness – that a baby smiles – because a mom and a dad – grandparents – siblings – a woman in the supermarket – smiled and the child mimicked that smile – something that people have been doing since the 13th century – since the 1st century – since the beginning of time?

Love begets love. I know that Jesus who didn’t have children told us to love one another – and that love begets more love – and more love begets more love – in our homes, in our workplaces, in the park – giving another parent a chance to put her kid on the swing – or letting others out into traffic or out of parking lots – ahead of us – and on and on and on.

Peace begets peace.

What happened to Cain and Abel? How come Cain killed his brother Abel? How come there have been wars and so much destruction – and so many people are killed before they had a chance to become parents?

Life – it can be as fragile as a spider web anchored on the passenger side of a car to a side mirror and the other end of the web to a garage shelf – a web spun out in the night – only to be destroyed and disappear without the driver knowing it as she or he pulls out of their garage in the morning to get to work.

Life – it goes on – like people in all those cars on Route 50 and 97 – as well as the Bay Bridge – people heading somewhere – with stuff in their trunks and glove compartments – with stuff on their back seat – with stuff in their minds – with stuff in their stories – experiences of love and hate, patience and impatience, hopes and giving up.

Life – today we celebrate our moms and all the moms who have gone before us – back to the 13th century – back to the beginning of time – all those who got us into this great chain of life and existence that we are part of.

In today’s gospel Jesus says he and his Father and the Spirit can dwell within us.

On Mother’s Day we can also say our moms and all the moms who have gone before us – also dwell within us – otherwise there would be no me called me.

Life – amazing stuff – pinch yourself and thank God for your mom and your grandmom - and all those who got you to this day. Amen.

MOTHER'S DAY

Quote for Mother's Day - May 9, 2010


"My child looked at me and I looked back at him in the delivery room, and I realized that out of a sea of infinite possibilities it had come down to this: a specific person, born on the hottest day of the year, conceived on a Christmas Eve, made by his father and me miraculously from scratch."


Anna Quindlen, New York Times, Mary 13, 1986