GOOD EXAMPLE
Quote for Today - January 20, 2011
"Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example."
Mark Twain [1835-1910]
Friday, January 21, 2011
Sunday, January 16, 2011
THE BRAIN
INTRODUCTION
The title of my homily for today is, “The Brain!”
Last week lthoughts about the brain have been bouncing around in my brain. It started with prayers and hopes for this Congresswoman, Gabrielle Giffords – who had a bullet enter her brain from the back and come out the front. Please God she will live. Please God she’ll recover – along with all the wounded – and prayers and hopes for the families of those who died.
Then when I saw the 3rd picture of Jared Loughner, the alleged shooter and killer, the picture of him without any hair on his head, I wondered what his brain is like. Prayers for him too – and his parents. Then I saw pictures of the shrine in his backyard with candles near a skull – which seems to be the centerpiece of his shrine. A skull – where a brain once resided.
My brain kept saying, “Crazy, madness, insanity!”
I’m sure your brain did your own unique wonderings. I’m sure this got you thinking about all this – as well as your wonderings about what others were wondering about.
Then I read that there is a gun show going on this weekend on the outskirts of Tucson. I wondered if anyone had the brains to ask: “Shouldn’t we cancel this or postpone this?”
The title of my reflections for today is, “The Brain.”
DIFFERENCES
One of life’s greatest discoveries is to realize that not everyone thinks the same way. Thank God. This simple truth is forgotten at least 7 times a day. Remembering this is the first step in communication.
At times I think of something I read somewhere along the line, “The greatest sin is our inability to accept the otherness of other people.”
I assume marriage and family and the home are the great classrooms where this lesson can be learned.
I know I learned it by living in a family of a mom and dad and 4 of us kids – two boys, two girls, and then in a religious community with so many different priests down through the years.
How about a parish? Look at us. Look at how different we are and how different we think and yet we can be one parish? That’s why I love the word, “Catholic” – which means “with wholeness”. The Greek prefix, “kata” means, “with” – and “holos” means, “whole”. We’re in union with each other in this whole world of ours. We are a world wide religion. We are almost 2 billion Christians and 1.166 billion of us are Catholics. I hope every Catholic has the opportunity to stand in St. Peter’s Square on a sunny day and look around and see our unity and our diversity. In the meanwhile drive 45 minutes on Route 50 to Washington D.C. Get off at South Dakota Avenue and go to the National Shrine and see all the diverse shrines to Mary – which bring together all kinds of cultures and backgrounds and countries that we Catholics in the United States are and come from.
People are similar and people are different.
We’ve all heard the old story about the man in the French Parliament who said out loud in the assembly, “As we all know, there is a slight difference between men and women!” And the whole assembly stood up to a man and shouted, “Viva la differerance!”
Hopefully, all of us can celebrate our differences!
Walk around Annapolis when it’s the outdoor “Paint Annapolis Competition” and you’ll see how so many brains are working in so many different ways. An artist who won several times once said, “Every street in Annapolis has at least 10 different scenes.”
I remember hearing somewhere, “You think human faces are different, you should look at human brains.”
Is that true? I’ve wondered about that in my brain - not having seen too many brains – maybe one or two somewhere along the line and two or three in a movie or what have you. They all look very similar to me.
This triggered the thought to do some searching about Einstein’s brain – because I heard it was a very interesting brain. I found out that a Doctor Thomas Harvey, a pathologist, removed it from the dead body of Einstein the morning after Einstein died – April 1955. Einstein didn’t want this to happen – but Harvey did it anyway and lost his job because of it.
However, he ended up keeping Einstein’s brain for some 40 years. Through the years he gave sections of it to various people for study. They have pointed out differences in his brain compared to other brains. However, others say, “No! you can’t prove what you’re saying.” So the brain keeps on being studied.
In doing my research on the brain I found a quote by Martin Luther King Jr. I’ll put it here because this is his holiday weekend: “Segregationalists will even argue that God was the first segregationalist. 'Red birds and blue birds don't fly together,' they contend. ...They turn to some pseudo-scientific writing and argue that the Negro's brain is smaller than the white man's brain. They do not know, or they refuse to know that the idea of an inferior or superior race has been refuted by the best evidence of the science of anthropology. Great anthropologists, like Ruth Benedict, Margaret Mead, and Melville J. Herskovits, agree that, although there may be inferior and superior individuals within all races, there is no superior or inferior race. And segregationalists refuse to acknowledge that there are four types of blood, and these four types are found within every racial group.” from 'Love in Action', Strength To Love (1963, 1981), pages 45-46.
I also read that Thomas Harvey took out Einstein’s eyes and gave them to Einstein’s eye doctor and they have been kept in a safe deposit box in New York City – and from time to time there are rumors that they are to be auctioned.
I found it fascinating that Doctor Thomas Harvey kept Einstein’s brain in 2 jars in a cardboard box marked “Costa Cider” – under a beer cooler in Wichita, Kansas – as well as in Missouri – as well as in the trunk of his Buick Skylark. At one point he tried to give it to Einstein’s granddaughter, but she didn’t want it. Eventually it made its way back to the original lab in Princeton, New Jersey.
SACREDNESS
This is a homily or sermon, so my brain is supposed to come up with something sacred to say – so that’s what I would say: it’s sacred.
I don’t know about you, but I sense a great sacredness about the human brain. From the accounts of the way Einstein’s brain was kept, that sacredness seems to have been violated.
I would much rather have seen it in a neat jar – in a big museum somewhere. I sense I would feel the same sense of sacredness I feel at a casket or when I saw the Rosetta Stone in the British Museum or when I touched a rock from the moon at the Airo Space Museum.
So having a sense of sacredness – for the human brain – for the dead in cemeteries – for churches – for all human beings – for all life – for all of creation – would be the point in his sermon.
And the sense of sacredness – is an attitude – an awe – that ought to reside in the human brain.
President Barach Obama called for a sense of civility the other night in his speech. I would call for that and a lot more. I would call for a sense of the sacred – in each other – and the more we build that up – the less the violence I would hope.
Somewhere along the line – I heard in a homily – something like this. The preacher said that Catholics have a sense of the sacred, a sense of the holy, a sense of awe at the consecration of the Mass – as well as the time of communion – when they receive the body of Christ.
The preacher next said, “If we have that attitude, that sense of the sacred, that feeling of awe, it is because we believe that this is the Body of Christ, Amen.”
Then he said something I have never forgotten – something that helped change my spirituality and outlook on life. He said that a man named Saul was going around arresting as well as killing Christians – and one day on the road to Damascus he fell to the ground in shock. He was blinded by a light and a voice said, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” And Saul in his blindness asked, “Who are you, Lord” and the voice answered, “I am Jesus and you are persecuting me.” [Acts 9: 4-5] This Saul becomes the great Saint Paul.
Acts and Paul and his Letters don’t tell us exactly how long it took Saul – to become Paul – how long it took him to realize what this was all about. But in his brain – there was a change. He realized that people are the body of Christ. Amen.
In doing my research on the brain I found a quote by Martin Luther King Jr. I’ll put it here because this is his holiday weekend: “Segregationalists will even argue that God was the first segregationalist. 'Red birds and blue birds don't fly together,' they contend. ...They turn to some pseudo-scientific writing and argue that the Negro's brain is smaller than the white man's brain. They do not know, or they refuse to know that the idea of an inferior or superior race has been refuted by the best evidence of the science of anthropology. Great anthropologists, like Ruth Benedict, Margaret Mead, and Melville J. Herskovits, agree that, although there may be inferior and superior individuals within all races, there is no superior or inferior race. And segregationalists refuse to acknowledge that there are four types of blood, and these four types are found within every racial group.” from 'Love in Action', Strength To Love (1963, 1981), pages 45-46.
I also read that Thomas Harvey took out Einstein’s eyes and gave them to Einstein’s eye doctor and they have been kept in a safe deposit box in New York City – and from time to time there are rumors that they are to be auctioned.
I found it fascinating that Doctor Thomas Harvey kept Einstein’s brain in 2 jars in a cardboard box marked “Costa Cider” – under a beer cooler in Wichita, Kansas – as well as in Missouri – as well as in the trunk of his Buick Skylark. At one point he tried to give it to Einstein’s granddaughter, but she didn’t want it. Eventually it made its way back to the original lab in Princeton, New Jersey.
SACREDNESS
This is a homily or sermon, so my brain is supposed to come up with something sacred to say – so that’s what I would say: it’s sacred.
I don’t know about you, but I sense a great sacredness about the human brain. From the accounts of the way Einstein’s brain was kept, that sacredness seems to have been violated.
I would much rather have seen it in a neat jar – in a big museum somewhere. I sense I would feel the same sense of sacredness I feel at a casket or when I saw the Rosetta Stone in the British Museum or when I touched a rock from the moon at the Airo Space Museum.
So having a sense of sacredness – for the human brain – for the dead in cemeteries – for churches – for all human beings – for all life – for all of creation – would be the point in his sermon.
And the sense of sacredness – is an attitude – an awe – that ought to reside in the human brain.
President Barach Obama called for a sense of civility the other night in his speech. I would call for that and a lot more. I would call for a sense of the sacred – in each other – and the more we build that up – the less the violence I would hope.
Somewhere along the line – I heard in a homily – something like this. The preacher said that Catholics have a sense of the sacred, a sense of the holy, a sense of awe at the consecration of the Mass – as well as the time of communion – when they receive the body of Christ.
The preacher next said, “If we have that attitude, that sense of the sacred, that feeling of awe, it is because we believe that this is the Body of Christ, Amen.”
Then he said something I have never forgotten – something that helped change my spirituality and outlook on life. He said that a man named Saul was going around arresting as well as killing Christians – and one day on the road to Damascus he fell to the ground in shock. He was blinded by a light and a voice said, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” And Saul in his blindness asked, “Who are you, Lord” and the voice answered, “I am Jesus and you are persecuting me.” [Acts 9: 4-5] This Saul becomes the great Saint Paul.
Acts and Paul and his Letters don’t tell us exactly how long it took Saul – to become Paul – how long it took him to realize what this was all about. But in his brain – there was a change. He realized that people are the body of Christ. Amen.
The priest who said this said that – our whole life – our whole attitude toward each other – can change – once we realize we are the body of Christ – and that’s what Paul would announce to the world – especially in 1st Corinthians – the beginning of which we had as today’s first reading. How we treat one another is how we treat Christ.
Great message. If your brain gets that, you get Matthew 25: 31-46. That’s what we’re going to be judged on at the end. What you do to the least of my brothers and sisters you do to me.
CONCLUSION
Bring that into your brain this week – treat everyone as the Body of Christ – and see if that makes a difference how you treat those in your family, those in traffic on the road to Damascus or wherever you are going. Amen.
In the meanwhile, don’t forget what Erma Bombeck said, “Anybody who watches three games of football in a row should be declared brain dead.”
Great message. If your brain gets that, you get Matthew 25: 31-46. That’s what we’re going to be judged on at the end. What you do to the least of my brothers and sisters you do to me.
CONCLUSION
Bring that into your brain this week – treat everyone as the Body of Christ – and see if that makes a difference how you treat those in your family, those in traffic on the road to Damascus or wherever you are going. Amen.
In the meanwhile, don’t forget what Erma Bombeck said, “Anybody who watches three games of football in a row should be declared brain dead.”
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)