"I never thought I could feel this way And I've got to say that I just don't get it."
Gordon Lightfoot in his song, "If you could read my mind ...."
Listen to the song. Who are the people you allow to read your mind? Who are the people who allow you to read their minds?
Thursday, March 22, 2012
ACCEPTANCE OR REJECTION
INTRODUCTION The title of my homily for this Fourth Thursday in Lent is, “Acceptance or Rejection.” Last night I watched for at least the tenth time the movie, The Shawshank Redemption. Each time I see it, I see something new or something different that hits me. Last night it was the moment when Red - Elllis Redding - played by Morgan Freeman - goes in to see the parole board of 5 people. They ask questions of a prisoner and then decide whether or not he is ready for parole. It’s a dramatic moment when you see the rubber stamp being pushed down on a piece of form - and then lifted. Then you see the word “APPROVED” or “REJECTED” filling the whole screen.[1] TODAY’S READINGS Then I read today’s readings and the theme that hit me was “Acceptance or Rejection”. I was wondering was it the movie that got me to see that theme in today’s readings. I don’t know, but I’d like to reflect upon them for a homily for today. In today’s First reading from Exodus 32: 7-15 and today’s Psalm 106: 10-23 we hear the sounds of rejection of God and accepting the Golden Calf - a statue of an animal - animals that eat straw - over ME. We hear the sounds of a parent talking - trying to induce guilt. “After all I have done for you.” “I have freed you from Egypt” - and “Did you ever think what the Egyptians will say - now that you have fallen apart as a people?” Today version would be, “What am I chopped liver?” Today’s Gospel from John 5: 31-47 has Jesus voicing the same feelings of how he feels for being rejected. WE’VE BEEN THERE We know what it feels like in being rejected. It happens all our life. The little kid experiences the disappearance of his or her mom or dad - when the bedroom door is closed in the night - and all is dark - and they are all alone. They experience it at school and in the playground. Teenagers experience it with teams and romances and not making the play or when they think the teacher favors so and so over them - with attention and marks. “Get over it!” they are told - but sometimes that’s easier said than done. Then there are adult relationships. Then there are jobs. Then there are family situations. Then there is marriage. She’s up in bed waiting to be held - but he’s downstairs holding onto the remote - clicking away looking for action on the boob tube. We’ve been there. We know about acceptance - but we know about rejection far more - because the negative often has far more power than the positive. CONCLUSION We know how it irks or hurts to be with someone and we’re telling a great story and they yawn or look at their watch or over our head at something more interesting. In prayer, there are distractions, but I assume if we work at giving God full attention in prayer and worship, we’ll find ourselves giving that same attention to each other and vice versa.
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NOTE
[1] I thought it said, "Accepted" or "Rejected" till I looked it up on Google - where I found the YouTube scene that I put in the beginning of this Blog piece. Surprise the word in the movie is, "Approved". Then I went looking to see if the word was "REJECTED" in the earlier scenes - and I found the following YouTube piece that puts three scenes together. The texture of the film is not as good as the one on top. Check it out.
PICKING A CHURCH
March 22, 2012
Quote for Today
"Ask yourself, 'What kind of a church would ours be if everyone was like I am?'"
Someone
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
THE CRY FOR FREEDOM
INTRODUCTION As I read the readings for today - this Fourth Wednesday in Lent - the human cry for freedom is the theme that hit all my buttons. The first reading from Isaiah talks about prisoners being released. The Gospel talks about the dead being released from the tombs. I have been stopped by those Eastern Christian Icons of Jesus descending into the realms of death at Easter and releasing the dead. That’s how I read the words of the Apostle’s Creed, “… suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried; he descended into hell; on the third day he rose again from the dead; he ascended into heaven,….”
FIDELIO - BEETHOVEN When I read today's words from Isaiah 49: 8-15 - about prisoners: “Saying to the prisoners: Come out! To those in darkness: Show yourselves!” I recall the Beethoven’s only opera, “Fidelio”. The plot is simple - basic - universal - and has appeared in 1000 variations - before and after. Florestan is imprisoned - unjustly. Lenore, the woman who loves him, disguises herself as a young man "Fidelio" and gets a job in the prison to try to free him - to get him out of the darkness - and bring him back out into the light - to break his chains. Beethoven evokes the feelings those who have watched all those plays that portray people who are trapped - stuck - caught in situations where they are crying for freedom. It could be Les Miserables or The Shawshank Redemption - or A Christmas Carol - or The Natural - or Big - or the story of anyone who is trying to lose weight or what have you. REDEMPTORISTS Being a member of the Redemptorist Congregation in the Catholic Church - having Psalm 130 - “Out of the Depths I cry to you O God” as the place where we have our motto and foundational text: “With Christ there is copious redemption” (Copiosa Apud Eum Redemptio) - I am moved every time to promote FREEDOM - when I sense someone is in the depths of despair or the pits of problems! It's the cry of every heart - la voz de la humanidad - that Waltraud Meier as Lenore and Fidelio - sings in the You Tube piece at the top of this reflection. EVENING NEWS We watch the evening news - with the hope of hearing Good News - to find out about an experience about someone who is freed - trapped in a coal mine cave in - or to hear Good News that unemployment has dropped another 2 percent - because we know people who are out of work. We hope for a story about someone who is freed from abuse - or a war ends - or a person who had been in prison wrongfully convicted is released from prison - and on and on and on. As priest, unfortunately, I hear about darkness. I keep on hearing what we heard in last Sunday’s Gospel - Bad News from John 3 - when Jesus says, “… that the light came into the world, but people prefer darkness to light….” I keep on hearing about people hiding in the dark addicted to porn or alcohol or drugs or stealing or envy - and on and on - and they are crying to be redeemed - to be freed - to get out of those prisons - and the Good News is that like Lenore in Fidelio, Jesus disguised himself as one of us and came into our prison to help us to escape - to remove the chains - to set us free. CONCLUSION Beethoven's Opera, Fidelio, ends with Schiller’s Ode to Joy. Joy to the World - the Lord has come. Joy to the World - Christmas and Easter - the Lord Jesus came as a baby and came again an the Risen Lord after death to help us rise to new life - and keeps on coming to those who cry for freedom through and with and in Christ. Amen.
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On Top: Waltraud Meier - a mezzo-soprano singing in Valencia, Spain.
RELIGION TEST
March 21, 2012
Quote for Today
"It is a test of a good religion whether you can joke about it."
G. K. Chesterton [1874-1936]
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
WATER
INTRODUCTION I would like to babble a bit about water this morning - just two pages - drip by drip, drop by drop. Today’s readings for the 4th Tuesday in Lent flow with water. The first reading from Ezekiel 47: 1-9, 12, always triggers images to flow in my imagination. What would it be like to stand there at this temple that has flowing water everywhere. We’ve all seen modern buildings and museums that have water walls. Whenever I see one I stop I to listen to the sound of the water hitting flowing from top to bottom. How do they do this - engineer wise? And today’s gospel tells of the pool at the Sheep Gate in Jerusalem in the 5th Chapter of John. It’s called “Bethesda” in Hebrew. It’s a healing pool. I’ve wondered if there is any significance in the mention of the man coming there for healing for 38 years. I’m sure with 2000 or so years of pondering these gospel texts, there are various understandings. PONDERINGS ABOUT WATER What’s are your water stories? What are you experiences, your ponderings, thoughts, wonderings, memories, feelings about water? Much of my life, I’ve lived near water - and it’s been a blessing - and as I said in a St. Patrick’s Day homily, my parents grew up right at the edge of Galway Bay in Ireland. I’ve been blessed to have been stationed for 12 years on the Hudson River in upstate New York - and I walked down to it thousands of times. I didn’t have a room with a river view all the time - but you knew the river was there. I lived on the Jersey Shore - on ocean front property - with an ocean view room - for 7 years. I lived on a lake in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin for 1 year. I lived near a stream, a small one at that - in Tobyhanna, Pennsylvania for 7 years. And you might know that the word “hanna” is an Native American Tribe’s word for “stream” or “river” as in Susquehanna. For going on 10 years now, I live here at Annapolis - with a window view of Spa Creek.
So I sense water. As kids we’d go down to the New York Harbor, the Narrows, every Sunday with our dad - and Coney Island all summer with our mom. What about you and water views and ocean, lake, river, experiences? I love to quote the following from Moby Dick by Herman Melville, “Yes, as everyone knows, meditation and water are wedded forever…. Why did the old Persians hold the sea holy? Why did the Greeks give it a separate deity, and own brother of Jove? Surely all this is not without meaning. And still deeper the meaning of that story of Narcissus, who because he not grasps the tormenting, mild image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned. But that same image, we ourselves see in all rivers and ocean. It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all.” “Meditation and water are wedded forever….” What are your meditations and reflections on water? This past Sunday I got a call to visit someone who is dying. The woman’s son wanted to get his mom to the hospital because he said she was dehydrated. I saw a new born baby in the pediatric emergency section of Anne Arundel Medical Center a few days before that. The diagnosis was that the little guy was dehydrated. A lady in the parish gave me a copy of a book by Masaru Emoto, The Hidden Messages in Water. I found the book dripping with delicious comments. For example, this Japanese doctor of alternative medicines says, “We start our life being 99 percent water, as fetuses. When we are born, we are 90 percent water, and by the time we reach adulthood we are down to 70 percent. If we die of old age, we will be about 50 percent water. In other words, throughout our lives we exist mostly as water.” [pp xv] If that is true, then Masaru Emoto stresses that it be smart if we have good water in our system - not just out there - but also in here - in our bodies. Stagnant water is dead water. Flow. Go. Move. Move it. Make our bodies flow. Masaru Emoto in this book tells about his work with crystals - frozen water. Lots of people ridiculed and reject his theories and ideas. I found them fascinating. He worked for years freezing water to make crystals. Then he studied the photographs of them. If while freezing them you played Beethoven or Tchaikovsky or heavy rock music, you’d get different, very differently shaped crystals. Classical music had more beautiful crystals. The experiment that really seems weird was the one where he took a piece of paper and wrote words on it and then taped that sign to the water he was freezing. If the word had good vibes, you got beautiful crystals. It the word had negative vibes, you got definitely strange crystals - broken and disturbed. For example a sign with the words “Love and Gratitude” had most beautiful Chrystal formations - and another with the negative comment, “You fool” produced an ugly crystal.
He said, “Water has vibrations.” He added that the whole world has vibrations. CONCLUSION As I pondered that I realize that this is not strange. Everyone of us has a pulse - a beat - a bounce in us. Hook us up to machines in the hospital and our family around the bed hopes those numbers are right. How about bread, wine, spinach and ginger ale? Do they all have vibes? How about us? I preached to the kids yesterday at 4 sessions for confessions - one of my favorite questions: “What happens when you walk into a room?” Do you get an “Oh yes” or an “Oh no” vote. What vibrations did Jesus give off when he walked into a room or at the pool at Bethesda? What does he give us today? Maybe he’s been waiting for us for 38 years? Maybe Christ wants to give us wine made from water. Maybe Christ wants us to go forth and give glasses of cold water to each other. Amen.
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Picture in the middle: Tobyhanna Falls, Monroe County, Pennsylvania
Front Cover of Masaru Emoto's book, The Hidden Messages in Water, Beyond Words Publishing Company, 2001
WHOLENESS:
COME TO THE WATERS
March 20, 2012
Quote for Today
"Here are your waters and your watering place. Drink and be whole again beyond confusion."
