PERSONALITY TEST # 5

Looking at the following 10 punctuation marks and signs on a computer keyboard, rate them in order of “Which is more me? Which is less me?” 10 is the most me. 1 is the least me.

? _________

. ___________

, ___________

* ___________

( ) __________

+ ___________

- ___________

! ____________

= ____________

$ ____________

POSSIBLE DESCRIPTION OF WHAT EACH MARK COULD MEANS

? I like to question things. Raising questions is a great method to get a good education. A question mark is a fishing hook - that can help one find out what's under the surface of the waters.

. I like things in black and white period. If the president, the pope, or the priest says it, that’s it. No ifs, ands or buts.

, I like to pause – hesitate – for a moment knowing and figuring there is more to come – possible ifs, ands and buts.

* Yes, but what I’m saying is not my idea. I got it somewhere else. I want to acknowledge that. We’re all plagiarists. * The idea for this test probably was triggered by Victor Borge [1909-2000], the commedian and piano player, who used to do a musical comedy routine with punctuation marks.

( ) I think real communication happens behind closed doors, in secret, in the back room or during coffee breaks. That’s where one finds out what’s really happening and what's really going on.

+ I’m an optimist. I think adding life experiences like personality tests and various other things into one's lilfe are a plus.

- I’m a pessimist. I think subtraction is better than addition - that less is better than more which just complicates things and gums things up.

! Everything and everyone and every moment of life is exciting.

= All people, all ideas, all places are equal. Everyone and everything and every place has its pluses and minuses.

$ Money is important. It’s not just the root of evil, but is the real bottom line on many decisions.

_________________________________________

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NOW COMES THE REAL TEST

Share your results with those you communicate with. Hear what others think - whether they agree with your responses - and vice versa.

© Andrew Costello

LUMPS AND BUMPS AND DUMPS

INTRODUCTION

The title of my homily is, “Lumps And Bumps and Dumps.”

On a hot summer day, would anyone want to hear a pessimistic sermon? Wouldn’t we rather have a bottle of cold water or a cold one – a Margarita or two scoops of ice cream in a sugar cone from Storm Brothers in downtown Ego Alley, Annapolis, Maryland?

Yet, today’s readings can bump us off a high – or could even put us in the dumps. They can also challenge us.

Today – or any day – we can just adjust our hearing to soft, sweet music in the distance and ignore the Psalm response we just sang: “If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.”

TODAY’S FIRST READING

Today’s first reading is from the Book of Ecclesiastes. The author says his name is Qoheleth. He’s not the type of person you’d invite on your boat or to your picnic. He tends to emphasize the negative – to talk about the lumps and bumps and dumps of life. To me he personifies pessimism. Others would say, “Realism!” Yet his writings are preserved in the Bible and we can learn from his viewpoint – especially if we’re an optimist or different from him. Sometimes we need to hear another voice. Sometimes we need to hear tough news. Good news? I wouldn’t call it that. Hard news? Yes.

Today’s first reading is often so true. Haven’t we all heard people talk about some family they know? “Their parents worked their butts off all their life – and now the kids are squandering their hard earned money.”

We have all seen and smiled at bumper stickers with senior citizens behind the wheel of a big expensive car or RV that says, "We're out and about spending our children's inheritance.”

Read Qoheleth’s Book of Ecclesiastes every once and a while. We all know his classic description of seasons and time. “A time to be born and a time to die … a time for planting and a time for uprooting the plants …. A time for killing and a time for healing …. A time for tearing down and a time for building …. A time for mourning and a time for dancing…. A time for throwing stones and a time for gathering stones …. A time for embracing and a time for avoiding embraces ….” We’ve heard that at funerals here in church or we remember the song by the Byrds: “Turn, Turn, Turn” in which they simply put Qoheleth’s words to music.

Today: turn, turn, turn. Turn inwards. It’s time to change our hearts. Turn to God. Stop time. Ask God, “Where am I in all this? Where are You in all this with me? Where do I need inner growth?”

TODAY’S GOSPEL

And today’s gospel can hit us like a two by four. Here’s this rich farmer who is making plans for bigger and better barns. He doesn’t have enough room for his bountiful harvest.

And Jesus says the poor fellow is going to die that night.

Jesus tells the story in answer to a question from someone in the crowd who wants Jesus to be a judge in an argument with his brother to share the family inheritance.

Was his brother standing next to him in the crowd when the man in the crowd asked Jesus this?

Jesus doesn’t give the man the answer he expected. Jesus warns him about greed. Life is not about stuff. Life is not about what one possesses. Then Jesus becomes the story teller and tells the scary parable about the man with the great harvest – a parable about life and death.

Tough stuff. This story can hit us like being hit by a two by four.

“If today your hear his voice, harden not your hearts.”

LUMPS AND BUMPS ANDDUMPS

Being hit by a two by four can give us a good lump.

Sometimes it takes a bump to wake us up.

Sometimes when we’re in the dumps, we start to realize where we are. As they say in AA, “Before you rise, you have to hit bottom first!”

GEHENNA

In the city of Jerusalem there is a ravine we read about in the Bible. It’s a nasty cut of land – good for nothing. It’s all rocks and weeds and unpruned trees. I looked for it on my one trip to Jerusalem. For thousands of years it was a place to dump your garbage and your junk. Today it is an anthropologist’s heaven. Way before Jesus and in Jesus’ time it was constantly smoking and burning – and it got the name of Gehenna. It was hell. It was a dump – totally unlike the rich field with the bountiful harvest in today’s gospel.

Now, as far as I know, nobody offers guided tours of garbage dumps. Yet, if we walked through one, we might cry and we might laugh. We would see the remains of stuff we once saw in stores on shelves – with great packaging – and we bought and brought it home with great joy.

If we walked around a garbage dump, we might grasp what Qoheleth in Ecclesiastes was saying when he wrote the words of today’s first reading, “Vanity of vanities! All things are vanity.”

Nobody offers guided tours of Sloan Kettering Hospital in New York which specializes in cancer or the Emergency Ward in any hospital. Nobody offers guided tours of Nursing Homes.

But if we are there or visit people there or have to be there – we are suddenly stopped with life’s great questions.

When we have a lump – and it’s cancerous – and we have to go through chemo or radiation and therapy, all of a sudden we are experiencing what Jesus wanted this guy in the gospel today to hear. Life has term limits. Quickly get your priorities straight. Wake up!

So when we get a lump or a bump or we are dumped from a job or a relationship, we get what Jesus and Qoheleth were trying to get at.

“If today your hear his voice, harden not your hearts.”

ARTURO PAOLI

In preparing for this homily, I picked up a book, Meditations on Saint Luke, by Father Arturo Paoli. He’s a priest in Argentina in his 90’s. I wanted to read again what he said about today’s parable about the man with the barns.

The thing that hit me as I read his words was that this man in the gospel is all alone. He paints him having no relationships with people – only things. He’s not in communion with anyone.

And that’s hell – not just in the hereafter. That’s hell in the here and now. We know this. Loneliness can be very crushing and fill us with very empty feelings. A person can have everything while at the same time have no one in his or her life. A person can be very rich, but very poor. A person can be very poor, but very rich.

The questions are: “What makes rich?” “Is it people or is it things?”

And as the rich man in today’s gospel was about to discover: life is the surprises. We all know rags to riches stories as well as riches to rags stories. We all know people who had a great spouse or friend – and death or loss of that friend can wipe a person out. Sometimes when we are bumped and lumped and dumped by another – we sing those old songs, “I’ll never fall in love again” or “Alone again naturally.” Relationships that once were heaven can become hell.

Did this happen to the man with the barns? Did he have a wife? Did he have a family and was he blind to them? Was he hurt by them? Did he hurt them and they walked away? Were they his possessions?

I don’t know.

CARLY SIMON: “YOU’RE SO VAIN!”

When I read those words in today’s first reading about vanity, I started to hear Carly Simon’s song, “You’re so vain”

“You're so vain
You probably think this song is about you
You're so vain
I'll bet you think this song is about you
Don't you? Don't you?”

And she has joked down through the years about who the you is – but as far as I could read, she is not telling who the song is about.

Was it James Taylor, Mick Jagger? Was it Cat Stevens or Kris Kristofferson? Was it about Warren Beatty? She won’t tell.

But we do know who the readings for today are about. They are about us. We’re so vain that we can miss that. Many of our days could be entitled, “Vanity of vanities and all of vanity.”

Jesus is an artist. We hear the gospel story and it can hit us like a two by four – and we can start thinking and evaluating our life better. The story is about us. That’s how Jesus works it.

As the psalm response goes, “If today your hear his voice, harden not your hearts.”

CONCLUSION

Life is about communion – union with God and each other – relationships – with persons - not things - not going it alone - not filling the barns of our life with stuff - but enjoying life with people we interact and mingle with, laugh and love with, work and play cards with - rest, eat, drink, and be merry with. We come here to Mass to be in communion not only with Christ – but also with each other. Otherwise we could as so many say, “I go to church in my mind – and on a Sunday morning that can be in bed or on a boat or on the golf course or with a cup of coffee and the Washington Post.”

This church is not a big empty barn – like the barns the guy in today's gospel parable wants to fill. This church is filled with us. And to paraphrase Paul in today’s second reading, "Here there is not Annapolitan or Bostonian, Italian or Spanish American, blue or red, Democrat or Republican, but Christ is all and in all.” We are not here in church alone - or as individuals. We are here as a family - a community - people who know each other - or are getting to know each other - people who pray together. For new comers and for some in this parish, it's difficult to get to know each other in a big parish like this one is - but start introducing yourself to someone new every week.

“If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.”

DEATH IN THE DARK

(Luke 12:16-21)

I can’t pray tonight.
My mind, my fields,
my hands, are all too full.
Dark birds shriek
a death warning across
my cornfield skies
and all I can think of
is building barns:
bigger and bigger barns.

© Andrew Costello

BUS RIDE IN SAN DIEGO


Both looked very young.
They walked right by me
and settled in the seat
right behind me.
I could hear him say,
"I'll take the box.
You take the baby."

Both looked poor,
but you never know these days
with the way people dress.
As they situated themselves,
her voice was clear,
his was all grunts.

Will they make it?
What's their story?
The bus ride was:
music from the box ...
cries from their baby.
He has the box;
she has the baby.

© Andrew Costello, Reflections, 2007

STICKS AND STONES

Sticks and stones
may break my bones,
but names will
always hurt me.

© Andrew Costello 2007

AN IMAGE OF A PARISH: 
PERPETUAL HELP

Perpetual: as in always,

ongoing, forever faithful, present,

those eyes looking, watch those eyes,

those hands and arms

ready to reach and receive and hold,

always open, especially when the timing is bad ….

Help: as in willing to stop

and be there for another,

to get one’s hands dirty,

as in willing to volunteer,

willing to serve, to support,

even if the other is missing one shoe

or a sandal is falling off....

© Andrew Costello 2007

TRANSFERENCE

Am I the me
you think I am
or am I the me
I think I am
or are we both
somewhere else?

© Andrew Costello 2007