Saturday, January 1, 2011

HAPPY  NEW  YEAR!





Quote for the Day and Happy New Year - January 1, 2011

"That night, that year,
Of now done darkness I wretch lay wrestling with (my God!) my God."

Gerard Manley Hopkins [1844-1889], No. 64, Carrion Comfort, line 13
THIS  DAY 
IT  TOO 
WILL COME!




Quote for the Day - December 31.  2010


"Every year without knowing it I have passed the day."


William Stanley Merwin [1927-] For the Anniversary of My Death [1967]

Tuesday, December 28, 2010

WHAT  ME WORRY



Quote for Today - December 30,  2010


"When I look back on all these worries I remember the story of the old man who said on his deathbed that he had a lot of troubles in his life, most of which never happened."


Sir Winston Churchill
CHARACTER




Quote for the Day  December 29,  2010


"Character is what you are in the dark."


Dwight L. Moody
A CHILD'S LAUGH




Quote for Today - December 28, 2010


"One laugh of a child will make the holiest day more sacred still."


Robert G. Ingersoll

Monday, December 27, 2010

PICTURE  FOREVER




Quote for Today - Feast of St. John the Evangelist - December 27,  2010



"And I John saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband."



Bible text from the Book of Revelation 21: 2



Painting on top: View of Toledo by El Greco [1541-1597]. The scene might be Toledo just beflore lightning and storm. The painting is oil on canvast, 1597, The Metropolitan Museum of New York

Sunday, December 26, 2010





















TELESCOPE & MICROSCOPE

INTRODUCTION

The title of my homily is, “Telescope and Microscope.”

I don’t know if they still give telescopes and microscopes to kids for Christmas – but they are gifts we all have – all our lives: the ability to see the big picture and the ability to see the little picture.

The lenses in our eyes can be telescopic. We can look up and see the stars at night or see a valley from a mountain scenic overview spot; our eyes can also be used to see close up a tiny spaghetti spot on a white shirt – or a tiny piece of upraised skin on our thumb.

HOLY FAMILY SUNDAY

The Catholic Church makes this first Sunday after Christmas the Feast of the Holy Family.

I assume it’s a smart move - because Christmas is such a family feast – and many people connect with family at Christmas.

I assume it’s also a smart move – because we’re finishing out a year – and about to start a new year.

I assume the hope is that we look at our life for the past year – and we look forward to a fresh start in the New Year – and what better area of our life to look at – than that of our family.

BIG PICTURE

The big picture is to take a telescopic look at our family life – who’s who, what’s what, where have we been, where are we headed.

An obituary or a tombstone or a death memorial card is a telescopic look at a life.

“Just the facts mam,” as Detective Joe Friday used to say on the TV show, “Dragnet.”

How many times in our life have we been asked about our family? It’s usually the second question in many a conversation – the question after, ‘Where are you from?”

Then we give a telescopic answer. We say a few words about our parents – whether they are living or dead – and then how many brothers and sisters we have – and where we are in the mix.

Sometimes when we are alone – like on a plane – when we’re high above it all – we close our eyes and think about our family. We take a telescopic look at the whole story.

We’ve come a long way baby – from when we were a baby.

I used to travel a lot by bus – and somehow for me – bus rides used to give me many telescopic looks at life.

How about you? What works for you? When do you look at the big picture? Car rides? Vacation? Funerals? Christmas? Graduations? Marriages? Baptisms? Birthdays? New Year’s? Sitting in Church? Winter – especially when snow closes down our whole world? What gets you to look at the big picture?

On television and in newspapers and magazines there are lots of listings today and this week of the 10 top moments of the year. Sports Illustrated has 24 pages of people who died this year.

What were our 10 top moments this year? Share them with family.

We do this as a family at Thanksgiving – when I’m with my brother’s family and I do this with my 2 sisters every New Year’s Eve.

THE LITTLE PICTURE

What gets you to look at the little picture?

What are microscopic moments of life for you?

I love my niece Patty and her husband George’s Christmas tree. I was up to see them yesterday afternoon and evening in Reisterstown for Christmas dinner. Somewhere along the line they started the custom of putting on their tree every Christmas an image or symbol of something that happened to each of the 5 of them [George, Patty, Patrick, Michael, and Molly] that year. It might be a tiny two inch plastic motorcycle – George went with his 2 sons to Montana this year – to motorcycle the state – a lifetime dream he always had – to do that with his 2 sons – so they did it after Michael, his second son, graduated from Maryland last spring. Their tree is loaded with a couple of hundred hanging symbols and tiny objects. I should have stood there yesterday and wrote down what I saw - a miniature Eiffel Tower, stove, cap and gown, tiny, tiny golf bag, etc. etc. etc. There is a Christmas story there. I’ll write it up one of these years – unless Patty writes a book explaining the story behind each image. I’ll call her this afternoon and make that suggestion.

Christmas is a great time to look at the little picture – the tiny moments of life – many of which are triggered at Christmas time.

A Christmas present in a kid’s hand – and a smile on her face – and zoom, we are 6 years old again.

Each family has rich family traditions that ought to be looked at up close and personal – with the microscope.

Kids ought to be taught to ask the old Jewish family ritual question: “Why is this night different than all other nights?”

If we do it right, without being too nosey, it’s neat to ask people about the history of their rings and things – photos and paintings – family traditions and family rituals.

In the last 10 years we’ve seen a bunch of TV shows on CSI – Crime Scene Investigations. Every show has someone looking through a microscope checking out fibers and markings and scratching – and discovering big time clues.

DNA AND BAPTISMAL RECORDS

In our lifetime we’ve found out that we can find a lot out about any one of us from our DNA. In our lifetime we’ve seen lots of people making time to check out their roots – their genealogy – and we’ve discovered the importance of baptismal records – and ship manifestos – and various other tell tale sources for family stories.

Father John Harrison here at St. Mary’s has gone through all our old marriage and baptismal and various other records – and put them into a data base. He’s a man with great patience. Since this church goes back to the mid 1800’s – there are lots and lots of tiny details sitting there – in all those church records.

It’s painstaking detail work – trying to figure out handwriting and what have you. Over coffee and breakfast and this and that through the last 6 years I’ve heard him talk at times about all these records – how much work it is to do this – and how interesting it is as well.

Where are your family records located? Where are the photos – the letters – the mementos – the graduation autograph books? What happened to all those grammar school classmates and teachers – and all those people we have met in the story of our lives?

Our family history can be located all over the place. Research on all this in retirement is a great hobby. Family and lifetime reruns are far more interesting than TV reruns.

Family is where we all begin.

With the U.S. Census for 2010 just coming out last week – let the research begin.

Thinking about records – I remember the pain and the “uhh” feeling I had when I read not only about ethnic cleansing in the wars that took place in the 1990’s after Yugoslavia fell apart. Soldiers would go into churches and places where there were public records and deliberately burn everything – destroying everything – trying to obliterate not just people – but records that they were there.

WE ARE HERE – WE WERE THERE

I’ve always been a strong advocate of keeping a diary and memoirs – as well as sitting down with older folk and writing down their story.

Taping is almost as good – if not better.

At our provincial headquarters we have in our basement archives lots of records. I’m hoping my notebooks won’t be tossed and burned when I die – but somehow they will make their way to our archives.

I worked in our archives and enjoyed some detective work. I’ve done a tiny bit of historic writing and found out how difficult it is to be exact.

I hope families do the same thing – and this is going to be trickier now that we’re in the digital age – without much of a paper trail.

CONCLUSION – TODAY’S READINGS

I got this idea about Telescope and then Microscope from today’s readings.

Today’s gospel feels so strange. Jesus is just born yesterday – and here today, the next day, the gospel reading telescopes the next few years in a few paragraphs: Magi, Egypt, Herod’s killing of the innocent babies, Archelaus’ taking over of Judea in place of Herod, and Joseph coming back go Nazareth.

That’s the big picture – a telescopic view.

The other two readings give the small everyday day – the microscopic things – to things to do to make family life better: honoring and revering and respecting one another in the home – caring for our old folk. Then there’s Paul’s call for kindness, gentleness, patience, and forgiving one another – the challenge of the everyday.

The title of my homily is, “Telescope and Microscope”. You’ve been gifted with both. The hope of my homily is that we use both of them well. Amen.
FAMILY





Quote for Today -Holy Family Sunday - December 26,  2010


"I've begun to appreciate what a family means. I think that if I am committed to anything right now, it is to nourishing those bonds with my family, making them strong, getting them to understand me more, making an effort to understanding them more from the point of view of greater honesty."






Bridget, Senior Year of College, p. 155, in Women's Ways of Knowing, The Development of Self, Voice, and Mind, Mary Field Belenky, Blythe McVicker Clinchy, Nancy Rule Goldberger, Jill Mattuck Tarule, Basic Books, 1986