PERSONALITY TEST # 3*

Four people were sitting on a porch in their rocking chairs – sitting there near the end of their lives. The conversation came up about whether any of them had ever experienced God. And all four answered, “Yes.”

The first person, a woman around 86, said, “I was in a tornado once. We lived at the bottom of a mountain and the tornado roared into the mountain. The winds were howling. Trees fell. Rocks slid. I was scared to my bones and screamed out, ‘God!’ Well, we survived, but let me tell you, ‘There is a God!’ All my life after that I knew the roar of God.”

The second person, a woman around 91, said she was once in an earthquake. “We all screamed out, ‘God help us!’ And obviously, we survived. If you’ve ever been in a big earthquake, let me tell you, you know there is a God.”

The third person, an old man who was almost 90, said, “I was caught in a forest fire once and everything – EVERYTHING was on fire and we lost everything – EVERYTHING and we all screamed out, ‘God where are you!’ and the wind shifted and we survived. We lost our house but thank God we lived. Let me tell you. I too know there is a God.”

The fourth person, an old man named, Elijah, said, “I've been in tornadoes, earthquakes and fires, but let me tell you when I really experienced God. It was during the war and I was escaping. I was hiding out. People were chasing me. I climbed this mountain where I knew there was this cave – high, high up on the mountain. While up there God came in the sound of a gentle breeze. I knew it was God. I went and stood at the entrance to the cave. And God said to me, ‘What are you doing here, Elijah?’ I said, ‘I am running and hiding for my life.’ And we talked and we listened to each other. I told God, ‘I love you, God. I love you. In fact, I have this jealous passion for you, but I feel so all alone. Nobody seems to be following you. They have deserted you. They have broken down your altars. They have killed your prophets.’ And then God sent me down from that mountain with a mission. And that mission became the story of my life.”

*1 Kings 19:9-15

© Andrew Costello

PERSONALITY TEST # 4

Jesus felt frustrated, really frustrated. People didn’t seem to be getting what he was trying to say. The worst offenders were his disciples. They were sitting there listening to him in village after village – stop after stop – missing his message – time after time.

One of his favorite themes was this: “Dying to self is more important than dying to be myself.” He was trying to say: “Giving was more important than receiving – serving was more important than being served.” He was trying to say: “When you lose yourself, you can find yourself.”

He found himself wondering: “How many ways can I tell folks that life is all abut dying to self – giving of oneself – mothers taking nine months of life to knit a baby in her womb – and when she sees her baby she realizes it was all worth it.”

He often watched people eating. Bread fascinated him. It would disappear into someone’s mouth – get chewed – and then give energy and life to people. Amazing. This was what life was all about. Dying so others could rise – letting people chew up our time – and get energized because we were there for them.

While eating, while walking, while talking, he would hear the disciples bickering like little kids on who was # 1 and who was Jesus’ favorite – and what rewards they would get in following such an amazing teacher.

When this happened, when things seemed hopeless, Jesus would disappear. Disappearing worked for him. He’d go to the mountains – or the hills – or to a garden or to some deserted place. He just needed to become quiet for a while. He needed to become like bread and disappear into the mouth of his Father and be in communion with Him. This helped.

Then if his disciples didn’t track him down first, he’d come back to be with them. He would say, “Let’s go to new towns and preach and heal and reach out to people in new ways with new words.”

This one particular time, to disappear, he didn’t go to a garden or head for the hills or to a deserted place. This time he disappeared to a spot under a tree he loved to sit under. He loved to put his back against the wood of a tree. It brought him home to the carpenter shop – growing up with Joseph and Mary. It brought him home to his Father. He loved the mysteries of trees – roots and branches – water and earth.

It was night.

He fell asleep – into a deep sleep – into a deep, dark night. Frustration can be exhausting. People, especially those closest to us, can tire us out.

It was morning.

He woke up hearing a farmer singing. This certainly sounded less strident than a rooster. The farmer was singing as he was sowing seed. The field was within a rock’s throw from the tree where he had slept all night.

Jesus sat there watching the farmer. He liked to watch. He liked to listen. He liked to learn how people worked.

Some seed fell on the path. Some fell in shallow soil. Some fell among the weeds. Some fell on good soil. Missed seed didn’t seem to bother this farmer. Jesus laughed. “Farming doesn’t seem to be an exact science like carpentry is. Who would buy a table with 4 different size legs?”

“Better get back to Peter and Andrew and the others ….”

Back he went and it was back on the road again with his disciples.

And once more they were arguing on the road who was #1.

They came into a village and Jesus began to preach. He began to teach what he just seen.

“Once upon a time there was a farmer – a farmer who loved to sing while he worked. It was sunrise. He went out into his field to sow some seed. Some fell on the path that was along side the field. The birds quickly darted down and gobbled up that seed. Some seed landed on rocky ground where there wasn’t that much soil. The bright sun scorched any wheat that sprang up. No roots; no wheat; no bread. Other seed landed on good soil, but soil that was overgrown with thorns and thistles. As soon as the wheat began to grow, the thorns and thistles choked that wheat. Other seed fell on good soil and the wheat in those places flourished – thirty, sixty and a hundredfold – longing to become bread – hungry to feed a hungry world.”

Then Jesus said, “If you have ears, use them to hear the parable that I’m sowing it in the field of your brain.”

The disciples didn’t get it. Embarrassed, they waited till everyone had gone. Then when alone, they asked Jesus, “Why do you keep on speaking in parables?”

“Uuuuuuh!” came a deep groan from Jesus gut. But, instead of escaping again, Jesus spoke plainly – telling them what he was preaching and why he used parables.

“I’m giving you the secrets of the kingdom. To the others I’m giving parables – because they have what Isaiah said, “ears that don’t work – eyes that are closed – and hearts that need healing.”

They were listening.

“The seed that lands on the path are those people who don’t understand that the seed of the word is landing on them – and it just bounces off them.

The seed that lands on rocky and shallow ground are those people who have shallow souls – that can’t deep root the word. As soon as times get tough, they get going. They don’t last.

"The seed that lands on good soil that is flourishing with thorns and thistles, are those people whose can’t hear the word because they have too many things growing in the soil of their soul. Too many cares, too many worries about money, chokes the word and the best of resolutions.

“The seed that lands on good soil are those people who hear the word of God and understand it – and yield a field of thirty, sixty or a hundredfold.

“Oh,” said the disciples.

And Jesus laughed – knowing it was going to take them a long time, a long time for his disciples to become fields that would yield a harvest of thirty, sixty and a hundredfold of wheat – that would become bread – that could unite the world in communion.

© Andrew Costello

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.

_________________________________________

_________________________________________

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